Accessing Economic Research on Bangladesh

Marco Novarese, Quentin Wodon and Christian Zimmermann in an article in the Bangladeshi Daily Star discuss the great benefits of the web and, particularly, such important economic websites as RePEc in making freely accessible scholarly economic research. They stress that the benefits are especially manifest in developing nations like Bangladesh.

Extracts

A quiet revolution has taken place regarding access to economic research, and this revolution is especially important for economists in developing countries such as Bangladesh. Ten years ago, it would have been difficult for a Bangladeshi researcher or policy makers to benefit from easy access to the recent economics literature relevant to his/her job, be it related to monetary policy or the fight against poverty.

Due in part to a rapid increase in the number of economics journals, most libraries could not afford to carry print versions of the many specialised journals that are needed to keep abreast of
development in one's field. Beyond journals, access to working papers is also important, and working paper series were even more difficult to access than journals.

Today, by contrast, thanks to the power of the web, amazing resources are now available for free through websites such as SSRN (Social Science Research Network at www.ssrn.com) or RePEc (Research Papers in Economics, at www.repec.org). RePEc is probably the website of choice for
economists with (as of the end of February 2009) 712,000 items of interest. This includes 282,000 working papers, 422,000 journal articles, 1,700 software components, and 5,000 book and chapter listings. Some 19,300 authors are listed on the website, with their detailed contact information and publication listings. The site also includes 11,100 institutional contact listings. . . .

The web is a revolutionary force for democracy and openness. With RePEc, this is certainly the case within the economics profession. The services that RePEc provides should be especially valuable in developing countries, where other means of access to the economics literature are limited. But for these benefits to be fully reaped in Bangladesh, it will be necessary for more
Bangladeshi researchers to register with RePEc, use the site's services to quickly learn about the new research being conducted in their fields, and make their own works better known.

A New Push to Unlock University-Based Research

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education issue dated March 6, 2009 describes recent activity on campuses in support of open access, or “public access”, to research information. Entitled, A New Push to Unlock University-Based Research, it discusses the various approaches taking shape on academic campuses and the February 2009 “Call to Action” by the Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (information posted on this blog Feb. 16, 2009). Universities, mindful of the needs served by traditional publishing, nevertheless, are increasingly open to permutations of public access (especially, when granted over time), and see a place for co-existence of traditional publishing alongside public access.
(Please note that after 5 days, access to the Chronicle article will be limited to subscribers.)

More on the Conyers Bill

Lawrence Lessig and Michael Eisen in a posting in The Huffington Post lambast what they term “the corrupt publishing industry bill”:

You may have heard of Big Oil, but have you heard of "Big Paper"? We know, it sounds absurd, but check this out.

Right now, there's a proposal in Congress to forbid the government from requiring scientists who receive taxpayer funds for medical research to publish their findings openly on the Internet.

This ban on "open access publishing" (which is currently required) would result in a lot of government-funded research being published exclusively in for-profit journals -- inaccessible to the general public.

Why on earth would anyone propose this? A new report by transparency group MAPLight.org shows that sponsors of this bill -- led by Rep. John Conyers -- received twice as much money from the publishing industry as those on the relevant committee who are not sponsors.

This is exactly the kind of money-for-influence scheme that constantly happens behind our backs and erodes the public's trust in government.

Can you join us in fighting back? The first step is to join Change Congress's "donor strike" today -- pledging to fight the underlying cause of this corruption by not giving a penny more to politicians who don't support reforming our campaign finance system. Click here to take action now.

When you sign, we'll email a phone number where you can call your members of Congress to ask them to oppose H.R. 801 -- the corrupt publishing industry bill. We'll also send John Conyers' number. . . .

For the complete posting click here.

SPARC Open Access News -- March 2009 issue

The latest issue of Peter Suber's SPARC Open Access News has just appeared (March 2, 2009). A key topic covered in this issue is the reintroduction of the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (now, H.R. 801), also known as the Conyers bill for its introduction by John Conyers (D-Michigan), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. This bill is recognized as an effort to repeal the NIH Public Access Policy requiring deposition of NIH-funded research articles in PubMedCentral.

Good Intro & Overview of Open Access

There is such a vast amount of literature available on diverse aspects of Open Access and scholarly communication issues that someone new to these areas might understandably feel overwhelmed and not have a clear idea where to “dip in”. A particularly good website for such beginners, and indeed for others with a stronger background in these areas, is Walt Crawford’s website Open Access Resources. This is an excellent “annotated set of first-level pointers--resources that provide rich, varied sets of facts and commentary on their own and, in some cases, include pointers to other resources and source documents.”

BU Endorses University-wide OA Research Archive

From the recent press release:

Research by Boston University faculty and staff will soon be freely available in an online archive, bypassing the conventional and restrictive route of publishing papers in academic journals, announced BU President Robert A. Brown.

Although the online publishing alternative is voluntary, its unprecedented university-wide endorsement by all of BU’s 17 schools and colleges – the result of a jointly passed resolution by the faculty and the administration -- breaks new ground among U.S. institutions of higher education. . . .

The online archive will allow anyone to view BU’s scholarly work, previously only available to journal subscribers, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship isn’t used for profit. Since journals typically own the exclusive copyright, they often control access to intellectual property, restricting academics and clinicians from distributing it freely to colleagues and students. . . .

The increased ownership and control is good news for researchers such as Barbara Millen, professor and chair of the graduate Nutrition Program at BU’s School of Medicine. While working on a book about nutrition research, Millen found herself in the paradoxical position of needing permission to use her own tables and figures after they were published in a journal that retained the copyright to her work. The challenge, said Millen, who co-chaired the University Council committee that recommended BU’s open access initiative, will be providing faculty with the tools to make their research available online. . . .

News of the University Council’s vote was welcomed by Robert Hudson, director of BU’s Mugar Memorial Library, and as co-chair of the University Council on scholarly activities and libraries, a key force behind the move toward open access. Hudson says the effort to maintain an up-to-date collection of scholarly journals costs approximately $8 million per year. Annual subscription rates can reach $20,000, and tend to increase six to 10 percent each year, making the expansion of the library’s scholarly archive a financial challenge.

“This vote sends a very strong message of support for open and free exchange of scholarly work,” said Hudson. “It really has increased the potential to showcase the research and scholarship of the university in ways that have not been evident.”

Universities Must Disseminate Research & Scholarship More Broadly

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), recently issued a joint statement, “The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship.” The statement is a call to action for universities to ensure the broadest possible access to the products of their work.

Some specific institutional strategies mentioned in the statement include:

--Initiate a process to develop an institutional dissemination plan by explicitly evaluating existing dissemination activities, policies relating to promotion and tenure, and policies regarding faculty copyrights. For instance, charge a campus blue ribbon task force to advise the provost on key issues raised by the emergence of new forms of scholarly publishing and the gains that might be had by utilizing more effective ways of sharing the high quality results of the processes of scholarly and creative endeavor.

--With this foundation, develop priorities for supporting new dissemination strategies that enhance the value of the multifaceted investments in faculty research and scholarship by promoting the broadest possible access to it.

--Engage departments on campus in developing fresh articulations of the criteria that are appropriate for judging the quality of contributions to their discipline, criteria that embrace emerging forms of scholarly work, where those possess the same attributes of quality and contribution to new knowledge, and do not rely solely on traditional publications and historic practices. . . .

--Where local dissemination infrastructure exists (such as institutional repositories), promote its use and expand its capabilities as required. Where needed, build new infrastructure that supports documentation of the products of faculty work, both for grant management and compliance and for more general purposes. . . .

--Encourage faculty authors to modify contracts with publishers so that their contracts permit immediate open access or delayed public access to peer reviewed work in a manner that does not threaten the viability of the journals or monographs. . . .