[Biopub-l] 'Open Access' and 'Free'

[Leslie Chan]

Dear Barbara,
Thank you for your question. By "open access", we are following the
definition outlined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative, namely the free
availability of the full text of the journal articles for anyone who has
access to the internet <see http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml>. The
same definition has also been reproduced on the Directory of Open Access
Journal website <http://www.doaj.org/articles/about/#definitions>.

We are of course making full text open access only for those journals for
which the publishers have given us permission to do so.

There is no provision that open access journals have to be compliant with
the Open Archive Initiative (OAI, which does not refer to the open access
initiative as there is no such initiative). For those who are not familiar,
the OAI <http://www.openarchives.org> is an international effort in defining
metadata standard for describing electronic resources. The OAI also
specifies a set of protocol for the harvesting or retrieval of electronic
resources in distributed servers across the internet, thus increasing what
is generally known as interoperability of the documents.

While many of the people who have been involved in the development of the
OAI are also strong proponents of the broader program to open free public
access to the scholarly journal literature, they are usually careful to
differentiate between open access with the technical protocol. This is
because OAI is a much more general and more neutral technical-enabling
mechanism and it's use is not limited to supporting open access. Indeed many
commercial publishers are making their journal articles compliant with the
OAI in order to maximize their exposure on the web. However, these OAI
compatible material are not necessary open access as they require fee or
subscription payment for access.

At Bioline International, we are indeed trying to take advantage of the
power of the OAI protocol as well as open access. We are doing this by means
of archiving the open access journal material on an eprint server installed
at the University of Toronto at Scarborough
<http://eprints.utsc.utoronto.ca>.  This server is OAI compliant which means
materials on this server will be widely exposed to OAI aware search engines.
Coupled with the regular exposure of the material on the general Bioline
International web site, open access journals therefore gain additional
exposure and hence the probability of being discovered by potential readers.

If we have sufficient time and resources, we would like to make the entire
Bioline International web site OAI compliant, regardless of the access
status of the journal (pay or free) as we believe that improved visibility
and impact of journals on BI will grow with the growing international
adoption of the OAI protocol. However, limited funding at the present time
will not permit us to implement this site wide upgrade.

Using this email forum, we hope to keep you all informed with regard to
developments at Bioline International as well as relevant international
initiatives that may affect the readership and quality of your journal. We
also hope you will share with us some of your thoughts about your journal
publishing experiences as well as thoughts on how to improve our working
relations. Looking forward to hearing from you.

With best regards
Leslie Chan
Associate Director
Bioline International




on 5/22/03 11:39 AM, Barbara Kirsop at Barbara@biostrat.demon.co.uk wrote:

> I am getting confused about the term 'open access'. My  understanding is that
> 'open access' means the journals are archived in a format compatible with the
> open access initiative (OAI, same metadata  standards etc etc) and are
> interoperable with all other such journals.  They are of course also free of
> charge. However, some 'free' journals  may be free of charge, but may not be
> 'open access' and interoperable. I feel there is confusion arising here - at
> least in my mind!   Are all the 'free' journals on Bioline also OAI-compatible
> and interoperable? Are all journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals
> (DOAJ) both 'free' and interoperable?
> 
> I would be grateful for clarification - and it is good to have biopub-l for
> such discussions.
> 
> Barbara Kirsop
> Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
> www.epublishingtrust.org
> 
> 
>>>Dear Publishers, Editors and Journal Staff,
>>>
>>>We are very pleased to announce another excellent web resource for our Open
>>>Access journals.
>>>
>>>The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a new initiative from the
>>>Open Society Institute, SPARC, and Lund University that functions as a
>>>comprehensive listing of electronic journals operating on an open-access
>>>(free) basis.
>>>
>>>This long awaited project was just launched last week, and most of Bioline
>>>International's open-access journals are already included in the directory.
>>>(We submitted our journal information well in advance of the new website
>>>launch date!!) We have already emailed the DOAJ to request a few minor
>>>changes and ask for the addition of any missing Bioline journals, and we
>>>hope they will complete these new additions as soon as possible. This new
>>>directory will help maximize exposure to our open access directories, and
>>>provide users with an excellent resource for web-based research.
>>>
>>>We invite you to visit the DOAJ website - http://www.doaj.org/ - and see how
>>>it all works. We will be submitting new journal information to the DOAJ as
>>>new journals join the Bioline Project on an open-access basis, ensuring that
>>>all open-access Bioline participants will be well represented.
>>>
>>>If you have any questions about this service, please do not hesitate to
>>>contact me (bioline.international@utoronto.ca). Additionally, I will be very
>>>pleased to offer any further information about open access and open archive
>>>initiatives to anyone who would like it.
>>>
>>>I hope to hear from you soon,
>>>
>>>Jen
>>>
>>>Jen Sweezie
>>>Project Manager
>>>Bioline International
>>>------------------------------------
>>>c/o Division of Social Sciences
>>>University of Toronto at Scarborough
>>>1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON
>>>M1C 1A4 -- Canada
>>>
>>>


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