Sunday, December 31, 2006

Dramatic Growth December 2006 & Predictions for 2007

Synopsis

The dramatic growth of open access, both publishing and self-archiving, continued in the final quarter of 2006. The Directory of Open Access Journals passed a significant milestone in December, exceeding 2,500 journals; about 10% of the world's peer-reviewed journals are now fully open access. When new journals are created, there is evidence that they are at least 30% likely to be fully open access. This trend is likely to accelerate as more journals become knowledgeable about new, efficienct, freely available open source software such as Open Journal Systems, which greatly facilitates online and open access publishing.

Strong growth continues in open access archiving, with more archives and more full-text documents; all archives tracked showed very strong growth in 2006.

There are signs of an open access movement that is on the verge of emerging from the innovative edge into the mainstream. Open access has become an academic area unto itself, and a challenge to study, as those who have read even a portion of Peter Suber's more than 10,000 well-selected, thoughtful blogposts can attest. Open access education, however, is just beginning. PhD students in librarianship, for example, are finding open access and related topics an interesting field of study. Students are beginning to hear about open access in their courses, but soon they will be taught by teachers for whom this is their area of expertise.

My predictions for 2007 are continued, and accelerating, growth in open access. The most important trends I see for 2007, however, are less tangible in nature; a shift in focus from debate on the pros, cons, and feasibility of open access, to more solid work on the details of implementation. For librarians, a key will be a shift in perspective on collections, from the idea of purchasing or leasing what our users need, to building and preserving the collections our researchers and others produce. I see this trend as beginning in 2007.

September - December 2006

The final quarter of 2006 showed continuing strongth growth in open access in all measures tracked, with the equivalent of annual growth rates ranging from 19% (for DOAJ) and up. Particularly strong growth is noteworthy for E-LIS, with a growth rate equivalent to 55% annually (586 documents added), and PubMedCentral, with an annual equivalent of 40% (69,884).

Comments: strong growth in both E-LIS and PubMedCentral illustrates that different approaches to implementing open access can be highly successful. E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies, is a highly distributed and volunteer-based organization, with volunteer Editors around the world and a very small central staff in Italy. PubMedCentral is a project of the U.S.' National Institutes of Health, and is a highly centralized organization with paid staff.

Overview

Strong growth in open access, fairly steady with some seasonable variations or local factors affecting rate of change for particular initiatives, is now confirmed, for open access publishing and archiving, throughout 2006.

The Directory of Open Access Journals exceeded 2,500 journals this December; for details, see their Dec. 15 Press Release 2,500 journals in the DOAJ. It is estimated that there are about 25,000 peer-reviewed journals in the world; if this estimate is correct, then now 10% of peer-reviewed journals are now fully open access.

While the growth in open access journals is coming from both conversions of existing journals and development of new journals as open access, there is evidence of a increasing tendency for new journals to start up as open access, as discussed in my blogpost of yesterday, The Newer the Journal, the More Likely it is Open Access. According to Ulrich's, journals with start years from the previous century are less than 10% likely to be open access, while journals started in the new millenium are about 30% likely to be open access. There are definite limitations to Ulrich's data on open access journals, particularly evidence of understatement of open access journals.

One new measure added to this quarter's Dramatic Growth update is the estimate of 800 journals now using Open Journal Systems, in 10 languages. While the precise number at different points in time is not known for this free, open source software, this is remarkable usage and development for a software just released in 2003. This is significant because the efficiences of this new breed of software, and the free availability, is an important support for open access publishing. [Disclosure: I am on the planning committee for the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference].

There were many indications in 2006 of an open access movement that is on the verge of emerging from the innovative edge into the mainstream; most notably the open access policies either developed (e.g. RCUK), coming into effect (Wellcome Trust), or begun this year (e.g. FRPAA, the Australian Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

The phenomenon of open access is already well established as an area of scholarly study in its own right, as readers of Peter Suber's wonderful Open Access News blog, which exceeded 10,000 well-selected, informative and interesting posts in December; and the monthly SPARC Open Access Newsletter,which passed the 100 mark earlier in the year.

Despite these signs of maturity, implementation of open access is still in the very early stages, which will make the next few years most interesting indeed.

One illustration of the coming explosion in growth of open access relates to the beginnings of broad-based education on open access per se. While Peter Suber and other early leaders have been teaching those who chose to learn for many years, others are still preparing to teach. In May of 2007, the University of British Columbia's School of Library and Information Studies (SLAIS) will be offering a course on open access for the first time, which I will be teaching.

Students are already hearing about open access in many of their classes. Like many other academic disciplines, librarianship will soon be looking for a new generation of teachers with many retirements of library school faculty anticipated in the next few years. Open access and related topics are popular research areas for today's PhD students; within the next few years, many a library school will have one or more faculty members with expertise in this area.

Speaking of PhD students, one of the early areas of rapid growth in open access has been OA archiving of theses. One of the results of this will be graduates - new faculty members, new professionals and businesspeople - who are knowledgeable about open access, a whole new group likely to produce more than its fair share of advocates and OA supporters.

My prediction is that researchers will begin to prioritize learning about open access in response to mandates from funding agencies, and the more they learn about open access and related initiatives such as open data, the more they will embrace and support it. Educational efforts by librarians and others will be a very helpful factor along the way; the policy mandates will provide the incentives, and librarians will be increasing ready to help provide the information and needed support.

The most important thing I see happening in 2007, however, is less tangible in nature, but rather a shift in perspective; from debating the pros, cons, and possibilities of open access, to a focus on how to implement. For librarians, the key trend I predict for 2007 is a shift in perspective on library collections, from a focus on collections as purchase or lease, to one of building and preserving collections. This is a subtle shift, and arguably one that reflects a return to more traditional values, which is nevertheless key to the transition. Once we understand that building and preserving collections of the work of our researchers for everyone to share is the very essence of librarianship, everything else will fall into place, in my view.

Data

Early figures are from my preprint, The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Implications and Opportunities for Resource Sharing, Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16, 3 (2006), and my updates:
Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions
March 31, 2006 Update.
June 30, 2006 Update.
September 2006 Update.

Directory of Open Access Journals:
December 31, 2006: 2,514 journals (34 titles added in the last 30 days)
September 30, 2006: 2,401 journals (45 titles added in the last 30 days)
June 30, 2006: 2,292 journals (38 titles added in the last 30 days)
March 31, 2006: 2,158 journals (78 titles added in the last 30 days)
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,988 titles
February 2005 - over 1,400 titles
This is an increase of 113 titles from September - December 2006, a 4.7% growth rate or the equivalent of 19% annually.
The total title increase in 2006 was 526, a 26% increase over the year, or an average increase of almost one and a half titles per calendar day. Please note that this figure likely underestimates actual growth, as it reflects a thorough weeding project early in 2006.


December 31, 2006: 747 journals searchable at article level - 124,033 articles in DOAJ total
September 30, 2006: 697 journals searchable at article level - 109,840 articles in DOAJ total
June 30, 2006: 653 journals searchable at article level -- 101,434 articles in DOAJ total
March 31, 2006: 594 journals searchable at article level -- 92,751 articles in DOAJ total
Dec. 31, 2004: 492 journals searchable at article level - 83,235
This is an increase of 50 journal titles during September - December, 2006; a 7% growth rate, or equivalent of an annual 28% growth rate.

Note that the DOAJ list does not represent all open access journals, only the ones that have met DOAJ standards, and have gone through the DOAJ vetting process. Jan Szczepanski's list is much longer: over 4,705 titles total as of early December 2005.

Open Journal Systems
800 titles using OJS (as of June 2006) in ten languages

OAIster
December 21, 2006: 9,931,910 records from 726 institutions
September 27, 2006: 9,417,772 records from 680 institutions
June 30, 2006: 7,605,729 records from 647 institutions
March 22, 2006: 7,040,586 records from 610 institutions
Dec. 22, 2005: 6,255,599 records from 578 institutions
February 2005: over 5 million records, 405 institutions
This is an increase of 514,138 records in a quarter, or an equivalent of over 2 million records annually. By percentage, this is an 5% increase in this quarter, or an equivalent of about 20% annually (a much lower increase than the previous quarter). The number of institutions has increased by 46, 7%, or the equivalent of 28% annually.
For all of 2006 (Dec. 22, 2005 - Dec. 21, 2006), OAIster increased by 3,676,311 records, a 59% increase in records; and 148 institutions, a 26% increase.

The Registry of Open Access Repositories lists 792 archives as of December 31, 2006, up from 746 on September 30, 2006, an increase of 46 or 6%, equivalent of 24% annual increase.

Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext Articles
December 31, 2006: 1,552,467 free full-text articles
September 30, 2006: 1,435,924 free full-text article
June 30, 2006: 1,354,559 free full-text articles
March 31, 2006: 1,335,546 free articles
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,131,135 free articles
early January 2005: over 800,000 free articles
This is an increase of 116,543 articles, or a 8% increase (equivalent to 32% annually).
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 421,332 articles, or a 37% annual increase.

PubMedCentral
December 31, 2006: 766,387 OAI records, 100% freely available
September 30, 2006: 696,503 OAI records, 100% freely accessible (data from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) by Dr. Tim Brody. The ROAR site shows the impressive, if only beginning, growth curve of PMC.
This is an increase of 69,884 records in a quarter, a 10% increase or equivalent of 40% annual growth.

arXiv
December 31, 2006: 400,814 e-prints
September 30, 2006: 386,716 e-prints
June 30, 2006: 374,166 e-prints
March 31, 2006: 362,334 e-prints
Dec. 31, 2005: Open access to 350,745 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.
This is an increase of 14,098 e-prints in this quarter, a 3.6% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 15% annually.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 50,069 e-prints, a 14% increase.

RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
December 31, 2006: over 451,000 items of interest, over 343,000 of which are available online:
September 30, 2006: over 428,000 items of interest, over 321,000 of which are available online
June 30, 2006: over 385,000 items of interest, over 282,000 of which are available online
March 31, 2006: over 367,000 items of interest, over 266,000 of which are available online
Dec. 31, 2005: over 350,000 items of interest, over 250,000 of which are available online.
February 2005: over 200,000 freely available items.
This is an increase of 23,000 items available online, a 5% increase, or the equivalent of a 20% annual increase.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 101,000 items of interest, a 29% increase.

E-LIS
December 31, 2006: 4,871 documents
September 30, 2006: 4,285 documents
June 30, 2006: 3,885 documents
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is an increase of 586 documents, 14% or the equivalent of a 55% annual increase.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 1,776 documents, a 57% increase.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
December 31, 2006: 25,080 items from 12 archives
September 30, 2006: 24,370 items from 12 archives
June 30, 2006: 22,819 items from 12 archives
March 31, 2006: 22,566 records from 12 archives
Dec. 31, 2005: 21,922 records from 11 archives.
This is an increase of 710 items, or a 2.9% increase (equivalent of 12% annually), significantly lower than the apparent growth of last quarter but significantly more than the growth of the second quarter of the year. The increase from the equivalent of a 4% annual growth rate to a 12% annual growth is likely more realistic; the third quarter includes metadata-only records added in error by one of the archives, which have subsequently been removed.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 3,158 records, or a 14% increase.

Other excellent sources of data for illustrating the Dramatic Growth of Open Access: the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) , by Dr. Tim Brody, which provides the number of OAI records for 746 archives, an estimated percentage that are fulltext, and charts illustrating the growth of each archive. The University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service's OAIster now also features growth charts for archives and records harvested.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

The newer the journal, the more likely it is open access

Data derived from Ulrich's Periodicals Directory illustrates a strong and positive correlation between the recency of a journal's start date and open access: the more recent the start, the more likely the journal is open access. None of the titles started in the 1700's that are still active are open access. The percentage of titles started from the early 1800's to the end of 1999 never rises to the double digits. The number of titles started in 2000 rises to 19%, while the percentage of new journals classified as open access by Ulrich's is about 30% in this millenium.

It should be noted that the accuracy of Ulrich's classification of journals as open access is limited; open access journals are likely understated. It may be of interest that, according to Ulrich's, new journals have been created in 2006 which are not even online, never mind open access.

Open data and a detailed explanation of the limitations of the data are available at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pqCs8wrw32HE0P95TKgSsfQ&output=html

Basic data in spreadsheet and chart form follows.





This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Ulrich's and DOAJ: an idea

To its credit, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts' for-profit Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, long considered an authoritative service on periodicals information by libraries, publishers, and others, is including open access journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals provides the highly valuable service of vetting journals both for appropriate scholarly quality controls, and open access status. Surely a business relationship would make sense here? The benefits would be consistent, quality information on open access journals for Ulrich's, saving Ulrich's staff time on the vetting process; and, funds for DOAJ, to help establish a sustainable business model for this essential service. This makes so much sense for us librarians ~ perhaps we should call our CSA rep with this suggestion?

Here is a bit of background explaining how I came up with this idea.

Ulrich's does not post their definition of open access on their web site. However, based on a bit of research, my best guess is that Urlich's practical definition of open access would appear to be "included in the Directory of Open Access Journals". For example, a Dec. 30, 2006 search of Academic / Scholarly, Online, Refereed, Open Access Journals with a start date of 2006, yields a list of 36 titles. All 36 titles are found in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

This is an excellent approach, as DOAJ is indeed considered an authority on open access, peer reviewed journals, as all titles are vetted for both criteria by a professional librarian before being added to DOAJ.

However, Ulrich's approach seems to be somewhat inconsistent. While DOAJ includes 2,514 titles as of December 30, 2006, an Ulrich search for Academic / Scholarly, Online, Refereed, Open Access titles, includes only 1,482 titles. There are indications that some of these titles are actually in Ulrich's, but the open access designation has been missed. For example, BioMed Central's new title, Chinese Medicine, is listed in Ulrich's, but does not appear on the 2006 start date / open access list. Another example: a search for "Hindawi" as publisher yields 51 titles, but a search for ""Hindawi" as publisher and open access" yields only 26 titles (Hindawi currently has 50 open access titles). Also, a search for "Public Library of Science" as publisher yields 8 titles; a search for "Public Library of Science and open access" yields only 6 titles.

So, here is the suggestion. Obviously, it benefits both Ulrich's and its customers to include open access titles. Since DOAJ is already doing the work of vetting titles both for scholarly quality control and for full open access, would it not benefit Ulrich's to contract with DOAJ to receive the DOAJ title lists on a regular basis? This would provide Ulrich's with quality, consistent information for open access titles - and, such a business arrangement should be helpful to DOAJ to establish a sustainable funding structure.

Considering the benefits of having this kind of consistent quality for open access titles in Ulrich's - shouldn't we librarians be asking our Ulrich's reps to make this happen?

This post is the sixth in the Transitioning to Open Access Series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Transitioning to open access: beyond fear of change

Some of the opposition to open access appears to stem simply from a very human, and very natural, fear of change.

In a recent very well-written post to Liblicense, Sandy Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press, expresses the viewpoint that a critical mass of self-archived articles will cause sudden, nonlinear change, "a point at which major disruption to the system could occur, with at least very harmful short-term consequences". Sandy is concerned about the possibility of "a real "tipping point," which would lead some major publishers to abandon the field of STM journal publishing in the belief (however erroneous) that they could not sustain their expected profit margins under the new regime thus legislated".

Sandy goes on to point out that an exodus of a few major publishers from the system, due to perhaps erroneous beliefs about cancellations, would cause major disruption in the scholarly communications system. Sandy worries that journals would not be able to find new homes, because "smaller publishers, especially university presses, simply do not have the capital to launch the kinds of sophisticated systems that these major players can provide..."

What Sandy is overlooking is the fact that if a few large, highly profitable publishers were to suddenly decide to go into other businesses - there would suddenly be large amounts of capital available from library budgets, to support university presses such as Penn State. So if, in such a scenario, there are "plenty of professors, administrators, and librarians appealing to us to expand our journals program", as Sandy predicts - no worries, they will have lots of cash!

Then again, it is always possible that the publishers who are making hefty profits from scholarly publishing will stay in the business after all.

Many thanks to Sandy for openly sharing this viewpoint. This kind of honest discourse will help us all to find the smoothest possible road through the transitional process.

This post is the fifth in the series Transitioning to Open Access.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Linda Hutcheon: A democratized diffusion of knowledge

The University of Toronto's Linda Hutcheon is one of Canada's more modest leaders of the open access movement. Here are some of Linda's words of wisdom, from a SPARC Scholars Speak interview: "Open access removes barriers. I find this very politically attractive. The sharing of knowledge helps us get at economic inequities – experienced both by smaller academic institutions and, of course, by developing countries. Everybody wins. More access and resource sharing lead to a democratized diffusion of knowledge".

Linda also points out that the biggest barrier to change is simply time; people are just busy to learn and implement change. The good news here: in the medium to long term - this is no barrier at all.

Another topic Linda brings up that we don't hear about as often is the monographs crisis. As library budgets have been diverted from the purchase of monographs to meet the ever-increasing serials prices, fewere monographs have been purchased - and now, fewer are being published, even though this form remains critical in the humanities.

One of Linda's solutions: rethinking university presses, with more support from universities so that they do not need to compete with commercial companies, but rather focus on academic work.

Well said, Linda.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

This post is the third in the series Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

Monday, December 11, 2006

John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project

The University of British Columbia's Dr. John Willinsky, founder of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), is - most remarkably - world-renowned for both theoretical and practical contributions to the open access movement. The idea of public knowledge embraces open access, but goes beyond to encompass the transformative potential of open access for society as a whole, while the free, open source Open Journal Systems has greatly facilitated the development of open access publishing.

While some open access leaders focus exclusively on increasing access for researchers, the public knowledge approach is broader. John talks about access to knowledge as transformative for society as a whole. Historically, it was an increase in access to knowledge that made public libraries, and subsequently public schools, possible. The transformative potential for our society with open access to our scholarly research is as difficult for us to imagine, as public universities might have been in the days before the printing press.

John Willinsky's outstanding theoretical contributions have been recognized by the American Library Association, who awarded the 2006 Blackwell Scholarship Award for John's book The Access Principle (also available in DLIST. Links to more of John's works can be found from the PKP Publications page.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is best known for its open source software - particularly Open Journal Systems (OJS) , a free, open source journal publishing software platform. Since its release on November 8, 2002, an event noted on Peter Suber's Open Access Timeline, OJS has become the publishing platform for over 800 journals, in 10 languages, around the world, greatly facilitating open access publishing. Examples of projects and journals using OJS: AJOL, African Journals Online, Revista Brasileira de Entomologia.

OJS is used not only around the globe, but also right here in Canada - for example, by Theoretical Economics, hosted by the University of Toronto. OJS is the platform of choice for another Canadian open access leadership initiative, the International Coalition for the Advancement of Academic Publication at Athabasca University. OJS is also in use at the University of Alberta Libraries, publisher of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, and the University of Guelph Library, host of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, both new open access journals.

PKP also produces the open source Open Conference Systems and Open Archives Harvester.

Initially developed at the University of British Columbia, in 2005 PKP became a joint project of the UBC Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University Library, and the Canadian Center for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University.

Recently, PKP was the sole Canadian winner of the first annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration.

PKP is a partner of, and endorsed by, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

To learn more about PKP, meet the PKP team and other open access leaders (myself included!) plan to attend the First Annual PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference July 11 - 13, 2007, in Vancouver, British Columbia - one of the three best cities in the world to visit or live, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. There's still plenty of time to submit a proposal to the Call for Papers.

Disclosures: while I do not work for the PKP Project, I do work (indirectly) for one of the partners of the project - SFU Library, and I am on the planning committee for the PKP Scholarly Publishing conference.

This post is the second in the series Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement: Budapest

There have been several defining moments in the open access movement. The first of these was the Budapest Open Access Initiative, "a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet".

3 of the 16 original signatories to the Budapest Declaration are Canadian: Leslie Chan, Program Supervisor for the International Studies program and the Supervisor of Studies for the Joint Program in New Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Jean-Claude Guédon, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de Montréal, and Stevan Harnad, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science, Université du Québec à Montréal.

Canada’s involvement in open access advocacy can be traced back to the early 1990’s. In 1991, Jean-Claude Guédon founded Surfaces, the first Canadian electronic scholarly publication. According to Guédon, "[I] began advocating open access as soon as I got involved with electronic publishing and this was because I came to realize that many academic journals were subsidized to the tune of 60-70% of their costs … you can argue that the money to support open access journals was present from the beginning”. What Jean-Claude is referring to is the fact that the majority of the work involved in producing the scholarly literature is contributed by academics and their institutions without financial compensation, particularly the writing of the article in the first place, and providing peer review.

More recently, Guédon has been very active with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and with the Open Society Institute, and gives about 25 – 30 conference presentations every year, worldwide. Guédon's In Oldenburg’s Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing, a detailed, thoughtful analysis on the history of scholarly communications, has been translated into 5 languages. A few of Jean Claude's other works can be found in E-LIS. Here, you can find The green and the gold: the case for mixing and matching, from Serials Review. This is a profound work, which talks about the two major approaches to open access - the "green" approach, or self-archiving, and the "gold" approach, or open access publishing - and makes a strong case for simultaneously pursuing both roads.

The other two Canadian leaders at that Budapest meeting happen to be world leaders on each of these roads to open access.

The work of the University of Toronto's Leslie Chan illustrates Canadian leadership in the global arena on the "gold" road to open access. Leslie is Associate Director of Bioline International, a not-for-profit electronic publishing service committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries; helping us to reduce the "south to north" knowledge gap. Leslie is also on the Executive of Project Open Source|Open Access. The object of Project Open Source|Open Access is to promote open access as a form of collaborative peer production. Some of Leslie's works can be found in E-LIS; for more recent works not yet in E-LIS, see the University of Toronto T-Space.

The Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, one of the oldest medical journals from India and now open access online, illustrates both the high quality of the work of Bioline International, and two of the benefits of open access. The author benefits from the greatly expanded access for readers, not only because the article is openly accessible, but also because the Bioline journals are included in key subject indexes. For all of the rest of the world, we have ready access to a valuable journal that we otherwise quite likely could not afford to subscribe to.

The Université du Québec à Montréal’s Stevan Harnad is among the world’s earliest and most vocal advocates of open access, the author of the Subversive Proposal of 1994, moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum, and author of the scholarly blog Open Access Archivangelism. While Harnad supports both the green and gold roads to open access, he is particularly known for reminding us that the faster road to open access is green. As Stevan would say, 92% of the world’s publishers have given the “green light” to self-archiving, so there is no need to wait. By doing so, authors will enhance their own research/impact. By making it easier for everyone to access and read your articles, your work is more likely to be read and cited. To find out if a particular publisher permits self-archiving, go to the Sherpa Romeo Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving.

This post is based on private correspondence with each of the leaders named, mainly from about two years ago. My apologies if not all details are up to date.

This small indication of Canada's early leadership in the open access arena is just the beginning! This is the first post in a series, Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement

Updated December 4, 2006