Thematic Breakout Session 7.4

STM Journals

Report by:

Paul F. Uhlir

STM Journals

Session Chair: Rogerio MeneghiniSpeakers and titles of their presentations:

SciELO as a Model for Communication in Developing Countries• Presented by Abel Packer

Collaborative Approach to Open Access: Experience from Bioline International• Presented by Leslie Chan

Adapting the African Journal Partnership Concept to Latin American Countries• Presented by Tom Goehl

Citation Indexing Systems and the Future of Scientific Publications in Latin America

• Presented by Clemente Forero Pineda

Number of attendants : 14

What are the current challenges and barriers to providing open and permanent access to data and information in this

field?

Legal: There is confusion about copyrights by authors and research institutions; publishers use IP as a weapon against the broader interests of the publicly funded research community; assignment of copyrights to publishers blocks access and reuse (e.g., text mining, other applications).

Political: Scientific societies behave too much like commercial publishers in the context of OA.

Economic: Potential economic benefits and network effects online of S&T data and info are poorly understood and lack of understanding undermines support for OA. Also, sustainability of OA models needs to be better understood.

Social: Potential social benefits of OA are even less understood and appreciated than the economic effects.

Technical: The technological benefits from OA need to be better exploited. The technological barriers from DRM and TPM need to be mitigated.

What are some of the most promising existing models or mechanisms for providing such access?

SciELO as a Model for Communication in Developing Countries• Presented by Abel Packer

SciELO was formed 10 years ago to address the problem of researchers in developing countries to be more integrated into and active participants in the international system of scientific publication and communication. The international journal system is dominated by ISI evaluation and impact factors, and historically the whole system has been skewed to favor the established journals in the OECD countries, which restrict access primarily to those able to pay high subscription fees. SciELO has resulted in vastly increased visibility and breadth of accessibility of Latin American publications through open access online, and in significantly higher impact factors for many journals and individual articles. SciELO also maximizes links to other open scientific communication outlets such as Medline and increases the speed of access. The SciELO mechanism is both an online network and a repository. Economic sustainability is addressed primarily as a public good activity by government S&T agencies, as well as participating academic and scientific societies, sponsors, authors, private publishers and brokers.

What are some of the most promising existing models or mechanisms for providing such access?

Collaborative Approach to Open Access: Experience from Bioline International• Presented by Leslie Chan

Bioline has similar goals and effects to SciELO, but unlike SciELO, which is organized at the national and regional levels, it more of a grassroots project. Bioline provides a platform for open, low-cost, volunteer and collaborative approaches to the formation and implementation of peer-reviewed journals in developing countries. Bioline supports the development of tools for OA publishing, advocacy and research on the benefits of OA publishing. Bioline also serves as an open repository. Bioline infrastructure funding is sustained though a mix of core institutional support, grants, in-kind support, and many volunteers. An exclusive focus on impact factors by authors at the expense of accessibility is an ethical issue. Funding of participating journals is based on similar, more local, sources. Conclusions and further actions:

– Need to develop new value-added services with OA databases and open standards.

– Open linking to open databases and other literature is crucial and should be promoted.

– More comprehensive measures of impact need to be developed.– Finally, need to educate funding agencies about the benefits of OA.

What are some of the most promising existing models or mechanisms for providing such access?

Adapting the African Journal Partnership Concept to Latin American Countries

• Presented by Tom GoehlThe US NIH Fogarty International Center and National Library of Medicine developed a program in 2003-2004, to implement editorial partnerships in Africa. The initial focus was on 4 African journals in health research that also had access to sufficient bandwidth. Mission is to promote and improve the publication and dissemination of health research info in sub-Saharan Africa. Council of Science Editors has provided links to editors at top health journals in US and UK BML, The Lancet, JAMA, and Journal of Public Health/Environmental Health Perspectives. Project coordinators facilitate the project. Tasks performed: identify equipment and facility needs, identify editorial needs, provide hardware/software, provide author/reviewer training and business plan support, managing editor and business manager, website support for OA access, internships, support writing of review articles, develop evaluation metrics, and administrative support. Total cost for all 4 services has been: about $75K/year.Proposal: replicate a similar project in Latin America.

Citation Indexing Systems and the Future of Scientific Publications in Latin America

• Presented by Clemente Forero PinedaAccess is not enough, but need to provide access to the highest possible quality research results. Garfield’s ISI citation indexing proposal was originally based on principles of: promoting scientific communication, validation of knowledge as the primary objective, elimination of fraud. These have been substantially implemented. However, he also envisioned that research publishing and citation indexing should be multi-lingual and fully international. Indexes should be established on a regional basis and integrated. OA was added as a part of this vision. The CPI from 1970 to 1995 increased 300%, but subscription journal prices by 1800%. There is a major problem in accessibility. Isolated journals in Latin America have no visibility, but journals that are linked, such as SciELO, greatly improve visibility and impact. The prevailing international citation culture has had a profound impact in Latin American research. Need for new local knowledge increasing. OECD needs more K from DCs. Are there more or less significant sci res results published in a small fraction of STM journals? Proposal: Need to implement the original ISI.

What are some potential realistic cooperative activities in Latin America to help address the challenges and barriers?

What: Enhanced publication in OA. For example, open linking to open databases and other literature with enhanced functionalities is crucial and should be promoted (e.g., species links, adding geospatial dimensions, automated translation). Need open-source value-adding tools.

How: Do an inventory of existing tools. Develop open-source tools for enhancing the value and functionality of links between literature and data. Do a pilot project in public health in Latin America.

Who: UN GAID, PAHO ?

What are some potential realistic cooperative activities in Latin America to help address the challenges and barriers

that have been identified?

What: Establish an international, polyglot indexing system through a federated network of indexing systems. Can the existing OA and subscription publishers and the stakeholders in the system move toward this vision?

How: Convene a meeting, or series of meetings, with all the indexing services, such as ISI, Scopus, Medline, and regional ones, such as Pascal, LatIndex, SciELO, etc., and the other stakeholders in the research system (e.g., OA journal editors, Academies, societies, and government research orgs). Start small and focused on the indexing, and then expand to other stakeholders. What are the key issues, opportunities, and challenges?

Who: Clemente Forero Pineda to develop a proposal.

What are some potential realistic cooperative activities in Latin America to help address the challenges and barriers

that have been identified?

What: Latin American Partnership for [Public] Health Journals

How: Same or similar methodology as for African Partnership. Clear purpose needs to be established. Need to develop criteria for selecting journals in less developed countries in Latin America (e.g., some Andean or Central American countries). The situation in Latin America is different from Africa, however, so this needs to be expressly considered.

Who: Tom Goehl willing to draft a proposal. PAHO, BIREME and SciELO could be partners with NIH in the selection and implementation.

What are some potential realistic cooperative activities in Latin America to help address the challenges and barriers

that have been identified?

What: More comprehensive measures of impact and value of OA need to be developed. Develop a typology of impacts—moving beyond citations. Text mining online as a tool is blocked by access restrictions and copyright.

How: Research impact: more than ISI (e.g., Google PageRank). Other factors.Social impact: use by non-researchers, social benefits (e.g., number of downloads—weak indicator/gaming; health benefits; use in education; policy—e.g., Willinsky)Economic impact: R&D development and economic return (e.g., Houghton)Need to develop a methodology, both statistical and more subjective approaches.

Who: (1) US CODATA is planning such a workshop with OECD in 12/07 regarding public sector information (PSI), which is a related area. Assessing relative benefits of OA and restricted scientific data and lit is similar and could be followed up. (2) Brazilian CODATA Committee and the ABC will follow up on this issue as well. (3) Also can start implementing indexing methods with CC OA lit. (e.g., in tropical diseases). Science Commons wants to do this using SciELO and Bioline lit. Potential interest by IDRC, OSI, Science Commons, US science agencies.

Any final comments or thoughts