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N. 38, April - June 2008
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 | Editorial
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Let's open the university!
Ignasi Labastida i Juan
Oficina de Difusión del Conocimiento (Universidad de
Barcelona)
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Last March, Barcelona hosted the spring conference of the European
University Association (EUA), an association with 791 members in 46 countries
across Europe. More than 300 rectors attended the meeting at the University of
Barcelona, which received wide coverage in the media. However, the resolutions
adopted there did not receive much attention. Among them was the set of
recommendations on open access for scientific knowledge1, approved then by the EUA
Council. Those recommendations aim to raise awareness of the importance of the
open access issue within the university community, both in terms of its impact
upon the research process and also its financial implications for university
libraries.
By “open access” we should understand free and
permanent on-line access to full-text scientific material, primarily research
articles published in peer-reviewed journals. That is to say free access with
almost no legal barriers, with the only requirement being proper attribution
and respect for the integrity of the work.
The adoption of those recommendations follows similar initiatives
from universities, institutions and funding agencies around the world,
especially in the UK and the USA, where mandates and even laws are flourishing
to require results from funded research to be published in public repositories
open to anyone without an access fee. At the European level, some discussion
about mandates started a few years ago, but so far only the European Research
Council (ERC) has adopted a policy on open access according to the idea that
the results of publicly funded research should be publicly available as soon as
possible2.
The current situation is the scientific community’s answer to
the evolution of the traditional publishing model where a few companies have
long had an exclusive copyright on scientific results and they have decided how
to disseminate that knowledge and who can access it. For many years, scientists
have done research, written and reviewed articles and have paid to access
journals without expecting any economic compensation because they only wanted
attribution and and to build a reputation in their career. This “publish
or perish” mentality has been used by publishers to monopolise that
knowledge that is mainly created in universities and research centres, and they
have used the copyright to lock it, even going so far as to forbid
reproductions on authors' Web sites or authors' institution portals.
Fortunately, things are changing. In order to face new emerging models, like
open access journals that use copyright to open not to lock, or the
requirements from funding agencies to publish on public repositories any result
published in peer reviewed journals, the publishing companies are loosening
their rules and allowing some acts that were previously forbidden, like the
reproduction of full-text articles on institutional repositories.
Nevertheless, we should not stop our efforts here. There is still a
long way to go to achieve full open access where no legal barriers will be
imposed on the spread of scientific knowledge. We will see how the
recommendations are implemented in each institution, but universities should
not be alone. What about public sector information? Why must it be locked by
default?
Now universities face the challenge of deciding what they want to be
in the future. They could close all knowledge created within their virtual
walls or they could become real sources of knowledge for society. Let's open
the university!
1.
http://www.eua.be/fileadmin/user_upload/files/Policy_Positions/Recommendations_Open_Access_adopted_by_the_EUA_Council_on_26th_of_March_2008_final.pdf(«)
2.
http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf
(«)
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