Online archive opens access to research

I was interested in this article in response to our class discussion regarding faculty submitting their work into an institutional repository, and the restrictions that must be placed on the work (imposed by the publishing entity). It was also here that I learned of the September 14 announcement of the "Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity" initiated by MIT, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and UC Berkeley. The Compact pledges to develop systems to pay for open access journals for the articles published by the institutions' scholars.

The University of Western Ontario has launched a new initiative, Scholarship@Western, meant to provide open access to articles and other scholarly materials produced by faculty and students. Like many institutions world-wide, Canadian funding agencies are beginning to require open access to published findings. For example, the Canadian Institute of Health Research will withdraw funding if open access to peer-reviewed articles is not provided within six months of publication. This is not only an effort to distribute knowledge, but also to promote transparency and public accountability. Launched ten months ago, over 460 papers have been added to Scholarship@Western.

Individuals create a homepage using a Western template which may include a profile, c.v., and contact information. The page may provide abstracts and citations, links to published and non-published articles, contributions, books, conference proceedings, presentations, etc., and PDFs may be uploaded. Site visitors are invited to join a mailing list to receive notifications of additions to the page. All information is maintained by the individual, and they are "encouraged" to review journals' copyright agreements before posting reprints to the repository. If the individual leaves Western, the page is not removed, but the template will be reverted to a generic version - it will continue to be accessible.

Scholarship@Western is intended to showcase Western achievements, increase the researcher and university profile, connect researchers and create collaborations, prevent duplicate research efforts, and advance new research developments. Additionally, it serves to collect, disseminate, archive, and preserve materials created or sponsored by Western. It is an institutional repository that provides a simple user interface allowing browsing and searching, and provides access to the institutions scholarly output via a single portal.

Western is admittedly behind the curve with providing open access to materials and does not currently require faculty to submit materials to an open access repository. Scholarship@Western was created as a response to the growing need for open access. The Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity is yet another response to this need, and has provided a framework for institutions to support open access journals as an alternative to traditional subscription journals. The agreement commits institutions to “the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.”

Open access is increasingly necessary and increasingly prohibited by the traditional subscription journal system. Institutional repositories are one method of preservation of the achievements of an institution and it's researchers, but do not adequately provide open access. Wide-spread support of the Compact, in addition to open access mandates by funding and other sponsoring agencies, should serve to create and encourage a new environment for open access scholarly communication and publishing.