Open access, the academic library and collection management : new problems, new responsibilities, new challenges Dorette Snyman Unisa Library snymad@unisa.ac.za

Open access: Three scenarios: Scenario 1: “We resign and create an open access journal in competition”

Scenario 2: “Let’s put everything we’ve written in our institutional repository”

Scenario 3: “I want to publish my own journal and I see open access as the answer” “I believe in the principles of open access and contribute to an open access journal”

If open access is the answer? If the academic library’s core purpose is to organize, preserve and make knowledge accessible And to make information accessible, findable, and searchable for students and researchers Future of the academic library is tied to the health of the scholarly communication environment What are the problems & challenges?

New challenges: Finding & searching Listing OA journals in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), J-Gate, PubMedCentral, Google Directory, Directory of Open Access Repositories (openDOAR) South African journals & IR’s? Do you list these indexes on your library’s web site? Searching: Indexed & searchable in bibliographic & other databases Do your information librarians use OA directories for searching? How about volunteering to index our OA journals? Where are our SA open access (free) journals? And institutional repositories? Your library’s web site: A-Z lists, research gateways? Bad day if Google indexing is the best

How findable is this article? Where is this article indexed? Not in ISAP. No information on the journal web site Thank you to SA E-Publications for making an effort

Problem 2: Searchability of SA OA journals South African journal of animal science – ISAP up to 2002 Included in SA E-Publications – good publications page

Seachability in A&I databases Open access journals Limited coverage of OA journals

Listing is free

Linking & citing information

More new challenges: IR’s Commercial publishers: OA & self-archiving policies of publishers Negotiating licence agreements to include IR’s Inform researchers of policies eg. Sherpa What about publishers that refuse to change? What about SA publishers? New pricing models for “author payment” model Institutional Repositories on campus: Be involved and drive the debate Participate in establishing technical infrastructure & metadata Researchers form discourse communities, libraries can easily be excluded if they do continually proof their value

Even more challenges: Advocacy Support OA initiatives DOAJ, SPARC membership Add your voice to put pressure on commercial publishers Information Access Alliance Drive the debate in your environment Provide resources ALA Scholarly Communication Toolkit Support and actively participate on OA in South Africa Offer your expertise – indexing, metadata, examples of other successful initiatives

How many libraries are contributing?

Is it then worth the effort? Conclusion Open access is not only about free If the information (or article) is not findable, searchable, retrievable & preserved Your work is not “open”, It is not be part of the scholarly discourse It will not be used to build new knowledge Is it then worth the effort?

URL’s Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ J-Gate http://www.j-gate.informindia.co.in/ Directory of Open Access Repositories http://www.opendoar.org/ SPARC http://www.ala.org/sparc/ SHERPA http://www.sherpa.co.uk/romeo.php Information Access Alliance http://www.informationaccess.org/ ALA Scholarly Communication Toolkit http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommunicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication ICAAP http://www.icaap.org/