OPEN ACCESS MONITORING IN BELGIUM AND EU

Dr. Paola Di Maio, ISTCS.org

Bruxelles 22 October 2012

Openaccess.be

video commentary of these slides, run while looking at the slides

OVERVIEW

Intro, Background

Research Questions

Challenges

Methodology

Study

Results

Piloting in Belgium and Europe

Contacts

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INTRO, BACKGROUND

Research emanates from recently completed PhD work (2009-2012)

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An independent research institute (ISTCS.org) was formed in 2009 to serve as umbrella organisation to develop the outcomes of the research further

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The institute is a virtual global multilingual entity with multilingual physical presence through partner networks

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PROBLEM

I set off to carry out research with funding from an EPSRC project (NECTISE), however I was unable to determine the state of the art because I could not access research outcomes, the few papers that I could access did not have the information/data I expected to contain

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Various issues and questions surfaced, in this talk I only cover one, in the following slide.

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RESEARCH QUESTION and CHALLENGES

1) Why, despite the existence of open access policies, many research outcomes generated with public funding are not accessible as shared knowledge resources?

2) How many actual open access resources (papers and other knowledge outcomes) are produced per funded project?

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(some of the) CHALLENGES

• Few studies available, very few datasets about OA
• No method to quantify/track open access outputs
• Specialised, skill intensive task, and not enough human resources available to track/monitor

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METHOD

Overall study of a complex socio technical problem space adopted EBR (Evidence Based Research) and MMR (Mixed Method Research)

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Method developed is called OAM (Open Access Monitor), consisting of a process, a set of templates to enable 'anyone' to monitor the adoption of open access policies

STUDY

The first study was

carried out over

100 EPSRC

funded projects

in the UK,

in a specific

domain

(systems

engineering research).

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EXTENDING THE STUDY

TWO DIRECTIONS:

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EXTEND TO OTHER DOMAINS (In part already done in the UK, where smaller studies were carried out in neighbouring disciplines)

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EXTEND TO OTHER COUNTRIES (the purpose of this talk)

PILOTING IN BELGIUM AND EU

DO

a EU wide study, starting with Belgium, then extend to other countries:

- locate a suitable set of publicly funded portfolios (looking for a similar number, approx 100)

- carry out OAM audits

- Ccmpare qualitatively and quantitatively the outcomes and draw conclusions

challenge: language (english only)

FUTURE STEPS AND PARTNERS

SETTING UP A NON FOR PROFIT ORGANISATIONAL ENTITY OF SORTS

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FIND PARTNERS TO FORM A EU WIDE CONSORTIUM?

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LOOK FOR SUITABLE RESEARCH FUNDING AND/OR AN ECONOMIC MODEL FOR THE WORK

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Related work presented at Digital Research Oxford 2012

Monitoring Open Access as a Web Service

(links to a poster)

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CONNECT and COLLABORATE

Thank you, if interested to work together on this please let's talk!!

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Best regards

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Paola.dimaio(*&@*7%g/m/a/i/l)