The Current Landscape of Open Access

Heather JosephExecutive Director, SPARC

ALA Midwinter MeetingSeattle, WA

January 26, 2013

Our Mission:

Expand the distribution of the results of research and scholarship in a way that

leverages digital networked technology, reduces financial pressures on libraries,

and creates a more open system of scholarly communication.

www.arl.org/sparc4

“By open access, we mean its free availability on the public internet,

permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print,

search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them

for any other lawful purpose…”

- The Budapest Open Access Initiative – February 14, 2002

Any Progress Towards This?

Infrastructure: Open Access Journals

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More than 8,600 OA Journals

What Does this Mean for Researchers and Scholars?

• Broader reach/wider audience for their work• Access to more, license to do more• New ways to see who is using their work, and

how they are using it

A Positive New Scenario……

…Bringing With it New Opportunities, New Challenges

We Rely on Filters.

Scholars need help in figuring out what is “good.”

Evaluators need help in figuring out what is “good.”

We Need Better Filters.

Journal Impact Factors.

Impact Factors are a Journal Measure.

More Granular Measures for Articles and People Needed.

The Digital Environment Lets Us Collect Information on More than

Just Citations.

Article Level Metrics

Choose the Aspect of Impact you Want to Explore.

From Mentions In the Media…

Tweets and Re-Tweets…

No Single Indicator Tells Whole Story.

Opportunities to Paint a Fuller Picture by Aggregating

Information.

As With Impact Factors, Alt Metrics and ALMS have

shortcomings.

Not Yet Fully Understood.

Still Early Days. But Important Days.

Infrastructure:Open Access Repositories

www.arl.org/sparc43

Open Access Repositories

FEDERATION

Open Data

OER

Policy Framework.

Open Access Policies

Copyright

Open Licenses