Improving the visibility and impact of journals from developing countries: Experience from Bioline International Leslie Chan Associate Director Bioline International University of Toronto at Scarborough OSISA/eIFL Open Access Workshop for Southern Africa August 2006, Pretoria, South Africa

Outline What is Bioline International - Goals, objectives Broader Context - Open Access and journals from developing countries Partnership Impact of OA so far Ways forward

Journals from developing world Limited circulation Poor visibility and readership Limited recognition Fewer citations Fewer authors and subscriptions Circle of limited accessibility

Open Access enables New “business” and funding models Disaggregation of “content” and “services” Post-publication evaluation and impact Integration of open source software and open standards –URI, OpenURL (vs) DOI, CrossRef Linking of Research and Education

Dominant Model of Knowledge Dissemination From the Centre to Periphery invisible knowledge Stopping the cycle of knowledge poverty and dependence

Open access enable Peer-to-Peer sharing … and new model of Knowledge creation, Sharing, and Dissemination

But need to better understand Barriers to access Modes of knowledge creation Cultures of sharing

What is Bioline International? Electronic aggregator of full text journals from developing countries OAI data provider Serve as open access platform for journals without the necessary infrastructure A South-North collaboration

Bioline International Development - using open source software and open standards Advocacy - Aims to influence scholarly communication practices, access to research literature, and funding support Research - Will open access improve the visibility and impact of journals from developing countries? How effective are research libraries in enabling international collaboration?

Core Partners EPT, UK CRIA, Brazil UT, Canada

The Reference Center on Environmental Information, CRIA, is a not-for-profit, non- governmental organization that aims to contribute towards a more sustainable use of Brazil’s Biodiversity through the dissemination of high quality information and education.

Funding Support University of Toronto Libraries Department of Social Sciences, U of T at Scarborough Open Society Institute, Information Access Program

Publishing Partners Scholarly and Scientific societies from 17 countries Research centres in biology and medicine, university- based publications, All non-profit and willing to experiment with free online access Most are supported by local subsidies and international aids Most have poor print circulation and no online presence

Meta-data exchange and dissemination partners Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - The eGranary Digital Library Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) OAIster.org - Scientific and Technical Information System - prototype.sist-sciencesdev.net/ prototype.sist-sciencesdev.net/ University of Toronto Libraries - T-Space New Partnership with SPARC since May work with ARL libraries

Recent additions (support from OSI) International Journal of Environment Science and Technology (Iran) Iranian Journal of Environmental Health, Science and Engineering African Health Sciences (Uganda) Health Policy and Development Journal (Uganda) Brazilian Journal of Oral Sciences VITAE Academia Biomedica Digital (Venezuela) Medical Journal of The Islamic Republic of Iran Iranian Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition (Bangladesh) African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (Kenya)

Key events: June 2003, full open access Jan 2005, full OAI compliant

Increased visibility Traditional directories and indexes ( e.g. EBSCO’s A-Z service, Ulrich’s Serials Directory), ISI Web Content Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ), African Journal Online (AJOL), Virtual Health Library of Latin America and Caribbean (BRIME), Latindex, Africa Index Medicus, eGranary Digital Library Accessibility from library catalogs through OpenURL Also accessible through HINARI and AGORA

Journal of Postgraduate Medicine Quarterly journal Based in Mumbai, India Print circulation <400 –Limited to school Paid subscription ~100 –Majority from India articles published / year

Making more accessible JPGM at Bioline

Archived at multiple places JPGM at OAI server

JPGM at PubMed

JPGM at DOAJ

Circle of Accessibility JPGMPubMed Directories e.g. DOAJ OAI servers T-Space Bioline International Search Engines Library catalogues OAI services e.g. OAIster.org Search Engines

Downloads and visitors Data: D.K. Sahu

Geographic distribution of visitors (n = 500)

Article submissions

International submissions

Projected Impact Factor

Economics of OA-P for India

Effect of OA on subscriptions

OA as a tool for dissemination Open access Increased visibility Larger readership Wider recognition Increased citations More authors and other benefits Circle of accessibility

Conclusions OA is increasing the visibility, accessibility and impact of some of the journals from developing countries Need to develop value-added service with OA databases Alternative measure of research impact is emerging but OA is the foundation

Thank you!