The Role of Libraries for A2K Panel

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Panel description

Reprinted from the A2K Conference program:

Libraries foster global access to information; they are central hubs of our knowledge infrastructure. Libraries gather materials from a wide diversity of sources for systematic storage and easier retrieval by the community at large. Libraries select intelligently, representing the judgment of researchers and scholars and educators, to identify and provide access to the most valuable information, especially peer-reviewed information, that can from the basis of socially responsible action and the further creation of valuable new knowledge. The digitally networked environment provides increased opportunities to achieve the libraries' key objectives.

And, the developing world confronts an initial digital divide, which requires intelligent public policy designed to make access to networked information a universal possibility; networked information technologies may enable developing nations to leapfrog the digital divide.

Library expertise in identifying the best peer-reviewed content has made them customers of traditional publishers, but now challenges them to add non-traditional materials and sources to their selecting, collecting, and access strategies. Changes in the publishing industry make some forms of information access easier and have increased the quantity of materials available to library users, but new models of information access suggest new opportunities. There is widespread debate about the best economic models for assuring reliable, ubiquitous access to high-quality information. The marketplace is abuzz with new proposals and models from both traditional publishers and innovators.

This panel will accordingly focus on libraries' past, present and future roles in fostering global access to knowledge. The range of topics will include: National and international library cooperation in securing access to information; current initiatives supporting developing nations' access to premier scientific information; development of open access models for publishing and various economic models supporting them; and mass digitization projects, including Google Print, the European Union initiative, and the Open Content Alliance.

Questions before this panel may include:

  • How do libraries make judgments that best serve their users among materials provided in different forms and on different models?
  • What roles are emerging for libraries as de facto publishers (through institutional repositories and other initiatives)?
  • How will libraries incorporate materials that do not fit the traditional models of published artifacts (e.g., wikipedias, collaborative research sites, blogs) into their collections?
  • Who will be responsible for the long-term archiving and preservation of information and of assuring access to information?
  • What will be the role of libraries in an age when users can disintermediate them and go, via the Internet, directly to information sources of highly variable quality and reliability?
  • [added]: What is Open Access? Is it related to Open Source and Creative Commons? What is Open Access's target content? What is Open Access self-archiving? How can researchers be persuaded to do Open Access self-archiving, and why? Is copyright an obstacle? How can institutional and funder self-archiving mandates help? How can the Library Community help?
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Panelists

The conference website lists more complete speaker biographies.

Speakers:

  • Christina Birdie, Librarian, Indian Institute of Astrophysics
  • Stevan Harnad, Professor, University of Southampton, School of Electronics and Computer Science
  • Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
  • Guy Pessach, Lecturer, The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Moderator:

  • Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian, Yale University Sterling Memorial Library
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Presentations

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Guy Pessach

An intellectual framework for copyright

1. The political economy of libraries: libraries as K intermediaries

A call for research: there is little theoretical writing about libraries as media institutions & knowledge intermediaries.

Libraries subsidize collection acquisition/consumption, but also indirectly subsidize knowledge-based production. Libraries are the main consumers of many scholarly publications. Library collection decisions shape knowledge markets.

We can locate libraries among a "new map of knowledge intermediaries": many commercialized knowledge intermediaries such as Google Print or Amazon, on the one hand, and among hubs of peer production such as the Guttenberg Project and Wikipedia, on the other. Libraries are a platform that mediates these two groups of knowledge intermediaries. Libraries also need to supplement what is not provided by other k. intermediaries.

2. Copyright laws, exceptions, & limitations: policy recommendations to adjust current legal structure to the info age

We need to move into a legal regime that recognizes mandatory exemptions at a national level--for cultural preservation. We need this change to incent domestic use of exceptions and limitations.

We need a regime with room for flexible knowledge preservation & dissemination that applies not only to public libraries and public archives, but to the new map of knowledge intermediaries.

We need an exemption for digitized preservation, not just "tangible objects." We face large-scale, large-scope demands for digital reproduction. We need to move the balancing point to allow the digital reproduction and instead restrict at the point of secondary users, if necessary.

Google Print's aim to stretch the fair-use exception. As citizens, can we shelter ourselves under the fair-use exception when we then try to use the materials gathered in the Google Print project? Pessach proposes that mega-data reproductions which seek shelter under fair-use, the users who seek to use that mega-data should be similarly sheltered.

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Stevan Harnad

You can Google "Stevan Harnad" and find all his papers. They discuss the effects of author self-archiving on the sharing of global information in "Open Access Space".

Peer-Reviewed Research. Open Access Space is a very special subset of cyberspace. The specific target content Harnad is talking about is the 2.5 million research articles that are published annually across all scholarly and scientific disciplines, in all languages, in the planet's 24,000 peer reviewed journals (and conference proceedings).

Author Give-Aways. There is a profound difference between 3rd party consumer rip-off and 1st party creator give-away. Not a single author of a single one of those yearly 2.5 million peer-reviewed journal articles wishes to be paid a penny for access to their creative work. They just want it to be used, applied, built-upon and cited as much as possible. Their careers and their funding depend on the uptake and impact of their research, so they do not want toll-barriers to deny access to a single potential user. In paper days they used to mail a free reprint to any would-be user who requested one. Now in the web age it is only natural that they should make their "eprints" available in the same way. The most efficient way to do that is to "self-archive" them, openly accessible to one and all webwide, on their own institutional website.

Ninety-three percent of journals have already officially endorsed author self-archiving. Even for those articles where an author has foolishly signed an explicit agreement not _to self-archive, they can still deposit it in their repository and simply set access as closed instead of open. The article's accompanying bibliographic metadata (author, title, journal, date, etc.) are always made freely accesssible on the web, even when the full-text itself is not. For the 7% of closed-access articles, would-be users can instead email the author to request an eprint by email. The institutional repository software automates and facilitates such email eprint requests.

Extending the "Publish-or-Perish" Mandate to "Publish and Self-Archive": Self-archiving can thus provide immediate Open Access to 100% of this peer-reviewed research right now, increasing its usage and impact by 25-250%. Yet only 15% of this annual give-away content is actually being self-archived spontaneously today. The funders for scholars need to extend the "publish or perish" mandate into a "publish and self-archive or perish" mandate. This is a carrot, not a stick. If the enhancement of usage and citation impact is not enough reward in itself, it is also rewarded by increased salaries and research funding.

Author surveys show that 95% of researchers would comply with a self-archiving mandate and 93% of journals already give immediate self-archiving their green light.

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Heather Joseph

Heather Joseph is a publisher. She will be discussing what SPARC is doing, working with research & academic libraries.

  • The traditional role of libraries--fostering access to information--is centrally aligned with the aims of A2K.
  • Pressures on the library community include:
    • Reinvention of profession in digital world
    • Librarians as experts in data management

Decades of rising costs have squeezed the abilities of libraries to provide access to scholarly information to users in traditional ways. For example, scholarly journal prices have risen 300% in the past 20 years.

Collaborative Action via SPARC

  • 800+ academic & research libraries in N. America, Europe, and now Japan
  • SPARC's strategy aims to advance an open system of scholarship by reducing barriers to access & sharing
    • Educating stakeholders about the problems facing scholarly communication & the opportunities for change.
    • Incubating demos of business models that maximize access to scholarly information.
    • Advocating pol'y changes to support use of tech to advance scholarship, and recognize that dissemination is an essential, inseparable component of the research process.

Advocacy work that SPARC does with the library community:

  • NIH public access pol'y (via PubMedCentral)--targeted work to ensure successful implementation.
  • Goals of the policy:
    • Increased access
    • Creation of permanent archive
    • Advancement of science
    • Increased accountability

Pub Med Central is an ideal chance to advance conversation to lower pol'y barriers with key institutions.

  • U.S. Public Access legislation
  • Am. Ctr. for Cures Bill (intro'd Dec. 2005)
  • Proposed Fed. Research Public Access Act
    • spans 10 major research agencies with $100m+ research budgets
    • Requires deposit of final manuscript within 6 months of publication

Popular message to move politicians: "Taxpayer Access"

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (AT@). AT@ espouses four key principles (see the website). You can sign on with your support.

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Christina Birdie

Enabling A2K: Indian Libraries' Endeavor How do we enable A2K in rapidly developing countries? In India, there are many adequately equipped libraries that cater to elites, but there also are many libraries without proper space or financial resources. How can we do better? We need to target the needs of specific user groups. India can use cutting-edge technology, an emerging strength of the country. There are new roles for librarians to become knowledge workers.

Challenges to Access

  • Remote locations
  • Absence of connectivity
  • Diverse background
  • Expensive price tag
  • Public libraries vis-a-vis Academic & Research libraries
  • Technology vs. training

See the hole-in-the-wall experiment by Sugata Mitra.

Empowering Libraries Within

  • Adapting to hybrid culture
    • transformation process
    • revising library legislation
    • "Cyberdhaba"--Rural India wired up ([1])
  • Enhancing the skills of library staff
    • redefining the training program
    • highlighting multifarious skills
    • ensuring funds for training
    • collaborating for sponsorship
  • Strengthening library cooperation & collaboration
    • consortia for supplementing collection
    • existing consortia in India
    • need for national consortium
    • open access as global consortia
  • Transforming library archives from physical to virtual
    • digital libraries and copyrights
      • rapidly increasing number of digital libraries
      • little enforcement of copyright rules in print, let alone in digital resources
    • print vs. electronic
    • commitment to users' needs

Advantages of Indian Libraries

  • large population of youth with IT skills
  • largest English-speaking knowledge workers
  • strong library cooperation
  • backing of pro e-governance government
  • rich collection of traditional resources in libraries
  • support of knowledge commission
  • partnership of libraries with industries

Disadvantages of Indian Libraries

  • inadequate funds to exploit technology
  • incomplete digital rights
  • absence of cutting-edge library school training
  • inadequate infrastructure for physically challenged community
  • invisibility of librarians and library associations

The Road Ahead Towards Vision 2020

  • Integrate information technology
  • Consolidate the library serviceds at different level
  • Empower the public libraries
  • Ensure equal access to information within the legal framework
  • Connect with libraries globally
  • Induct feedback mechanism
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Ann Okerson

The Role of Libraries in A2K

A long and honorable msision

Andrew Carnegie, 1835-1919

"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because htey give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. . . ."

What Carnegie never imagined: Not just books Not improving the masses but empowering them as producers of research agents of social change agents of economici improvement creators of cultural riches reaching to the ends of the earth

Organizations fulfilling the mission

Internationally IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations)--the global voice of the library profession.

  • Freedom of access to information. Advance the goals for ideas and works of imagination and freedom of expression embodied in Art. 19 of the Univ. Decl. of HR.
  • CLM--Copyright and Legal Matters
  • FAIFE--Free Acces to Information and Freedom of Expression

In the U.S. ALA--Office of IT Pol'y www.ala.org ARL--Federal Relatinos & Copyright www.arl.org Shared Legal Capability: a cooperative by the AALA, ALA, ARL, MLA, and SLA to lobby in areas of IP. Active re: WIPO, U.S. legislation, UCITA, court cases, etc.

Consortia of libraries ICOLC (Int'l Coalition of Library Consortia) http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia Keeps members informed about new electronic info resources, pricing practices of electronic providers and vendors, and issues of pol'y. eIFL--Electronic Information for Libraries www.eifl.net eIFL.net is an independent foundation that strives to lead, negotiate, support and advocate for the wide availabilty of electronic resources by library users in transition and developing countries.

Libraries fulfilling the mission: example of Yale Active support of HINARI and others Devel. partner in OARE

Middle East digital library initiatives Digitizing significant Arabic content ILL (Inter-Library Loan) Available through the Web Training and internship activities for libraries & librarians around the world Through paid subscriptions, support various open access & new pricing models for developing countries to have greater A2K

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Questions & answers

  1. Jesse Wilbur: I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to ask this in the session. I work for the Institute for the Future of the Book. My question is about the speed of print publishing vs. digital. We heard that there were 1 million chemistry articles written last year. Sometimes the good response, or the best response will take a year to come out. But what about new forms of authoring? Examples: blogs, wikipedia. These authors are writing out in the open, with comments/revisions submitted by peers at a rate that is impossible for print to compete with. Maybe this is another area of library advocacy, changing the market for the output from the academy, shifting it beyond digital publishing in peer reviewed journals to peer-to-peer publishing at the speed of the Internet.
    1. Stevan Harnad: You are talking about print publishing vs. online publishing, but the theme here is Open Access (online) vs. online Toll Access (online). And the primary target content of the Open Access movement is peer-reviewed journal articles (most of which are online, because most journals are already online, but mostly not Open Access). The primary target ot the Open Access movement is not unrefereed blog or wikipedia postings. Those are welcome too, but they are the so-called "grey" literature, whereas Open Access is first and foremost about the published research journal literature. And the goal is to make an online version freely accessible to those would-be users who cannot afford toll-access to peer-reviewed journal articles -- not to free the articles from peer review.
    2. Jesse Wilbur: Stevan, thank you for responding. I see your point here regarding closed vs. open online access. My suggestion is not that journals be released from peer review; in fact, just the opposite. The "grey areas" of publishing allow for greater levels of peer review and take the idea of "openness" to an important next step. In your presentation you mentioned that we only have 15% openness - achieving 100% is obviously something that we should attempt, and your analysis of the economic and workflow issues was excellent, but I want to suggest that new technologies and accompanying practices can be used as a tool to put pressure on journals to open up.
    3. Stevan Harnad: (1) Pressure is not needed to make journals open up; pressure is needed to make authors open up (for their own and their own work's good), by self-archiving their published articles. (2) Ad lib, self-appointed, take-it-or-leave-it commentary on unfiltered, unrefereed raw drafts is neither peer review (in which a qualified expert selects qualified experts to referee targeted submissions to standards for which the editor is answerable), nor a substitute for peer review, nor an inducement to anyone to provide open access to their peer-reviewed articles. (3) New technologies can help implement peer review more efficiently, but they don't alter its essential feature: expert-selected and answerable experts maintaining established, reliable quality standards. (4) Self-archiving is not self-publishing.
  1. Rik Panganiban, SSRC: Raised the issue of library access to commercial databases and data sets. There is industry data that is incredibly expensive for libraries to purchase, upon which public policy is increasingly made (e.g. Nielsen data). The Social Science Research Council is launching a new collaboration called the Data Consortium among libraries, research institutions and others to push for greater access, e.g. to older data that Nielsen can't sell any more. To learn more, email mediahub@ssrc.org.
  2. Becky Bolin: the Lexis-Nexis model of licensing access seems the future of libraries. Why can't we look for a middle ground like iTunes?
    1. Stevan Harnad: Licensed Access is not Open Access, it is Toll Access, the very antithesis of Open Access. Licensing is fine for institutional and consortial purchase of Toll Access content, and for negotiating the optimal price for Toll Access, but it is certainly not a solution to the problem for which Open Access was proposed and is being provided, namely, access for those would-be users webwide who cannot afford Toll Access. The solution is for the give-away authors of the target give-away content in question -- researchers' final, refereed drafts of articles accepted for publication in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals -- to make them Open Access by self-archiving them in their own Institutonal Repositories. And the way to make that happen is for research institutions and funders to mandate self-archiving.
    2. Please do not confuse the research accessibility/impact problem (which is the problem for which Open Access is the intended solution) with the journal pricing/affordability problem (which Open Access might or might not some day help relieve, but which for the time being is an almost independent problem, only indirectly related to the accessibility/impact problem.)
    3. iTunes authors/performers are generally not give-away authors, writing just for usage and impact! (Please distinguish 3rd-party consumer rip-off from 1st-party producer give-away.) As to Lexis/Nexis content, I don't know how much of it is author give-away, but whatever is, it's for its authors to give it away by self-archiving it: Secondary database providers (not being charitable institutions) sure aren't going to do it for them!
  3. Laura Godley, WHO: I work for the Lancet, decidely not Open Access. Like it or no, somebody has to pay for all the values that journals add, like peer reviewing, commenting, editing, typesetting, etc. Copyright applies--and should apply--to content, and not simply to particular versions.
    1. Stevan Harnad: Access Tolls (subscriptions, licenses, pay-per-view) pay Toll Access journals {c. 22,000} journals) for the value they add (and author/institution publication fees pay Open Acccess Journals {c. [http://www.doaj.org/home| 2200 journals} for the value they add). But Open Access is for those would-be users who (or whose institutions) cannot afford the access-tolls in order to use the articles in the (22,000) Toll Access journals. The author supplements the publisher's proprietary toll-access version with an open-access version -- the author's own refereed final draft -- for all the would-be users who cannot afford the toll-access version.
    2. Ninety-three percent of toll-access journals have already given their green light to immediate open-access self-archiving of the author's version. For the remaining 7%, there are two potential solutions (i) the author self-archives his final draft -- not the publisher's PDF -- in his own institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication (and considers whether or not to withdraw it only if/when an ostensible objection is ever raised) or (ii) the author self-archives his final draft as well as its bibliographic metadata (author, title, journal, date, etc.) and sets access to closed access (metadata accessible to everyone, but full-text inaccessible) rather than open access: The institutional repository software will then allow would-be users to cut/paste their email addresses in a box and click to send the author an email eprint request; the author receives the request, and then need merely click in order to email the requester the eprint, exactly as authors did with author paper reprint requests in paper days. Fair use.
    3. Please do not confuse Open Access itself with Open Access Journal Publishing (the "golden" road to Open Access). Open Access Self-Archiving (the "green" road to Open Access) is the faster and surer road to immediate 100% Open Access because it can be mandated.
  4. Robert Bachwitz, a researcher: The payoff to scholarly authors is that certain journals carry prestige.
  5. [Unidentifed]: Ph.D. candidate from UCLA, doing a dissertation about open access w/in libraries: How do we envision academic libraries as actual developers of technology--libraries as publishers of content. A second question: libraries vs. telecenters in developing countries. Do they overlap, or have distinct roles?
    1. Christina Birdie: Librarians are already skilled, can pick up other stuff to help their own users.
    2. Stevan Harnad: Anyone can try to be a publisher who can and wishes to. (Many new start-ups don't succeed, and it seems to me we have plenty already: What's urgently needed today is more access, not more publishers!) But an institutional publisher, whether the library or the university press, is a "vanity" publisher if it publishes only or mostly its own institutional output. Peer-reviewed journal publishing in particular requires neutral 3rd parties (not the author, nor the author's institution) to implement peer review in order to be credible and effective.
  6. Tom Oritz, Getty Research Institute: To Heather, re: Fed. Public Policy Act, the total investment in research is more than $70b. $100m is just a minimum threshhold. Foundation-funded research should move forward on the same track as taxpayer-funded research--and good news: it is. There are spectrum of solutions for open access, not just OARE or HENARI. The Web, as open access, is hugely successful. Our job as librarians is to secure that success. Librarians fighting with each other about minutia is wasteful. We should unite around our shared core values and practices. Lastly, we need an Andrew Carnegie for the 21st Century.
    1. Stevan Harnad: The web itself (and the online medium, whether toll-access of open-access) has undeniably increased access to research dramatically but -- and this is the critical point -- not nearly as much as it could easily do, and could already have done for at least a decade (and certainly will do, because it is optimal and inevitable for research and researchers): Self-archiving is still being done spontaneously (unmandated) for only c. 15% of the 2.5 million research articles published annually; that means 85% of research is still losing 25%-250% of its potential research impact, daily, monthly, yearly -- cumulatively and needlessly. The way to stanch this needless impact loss at last is for research institutions and funders to mandate self-archiving. International author surveys have shown that 95% of researchers will comply with a self-archiving mandate from their institutions and/or funders, and the 4 test-cases that have already mandated it (Southampton,QUT, U. Minho and CERN) all confirm this. (Librarians cannot provide Open Access themselves, nor can they mandate it, but they can help encourage and implement a self-archiving mandate on the part of their institution and self-archiving on the part of their institutional researchers.
  7. Jembal Shabulala from the South Centre: Re: "moving into an all-licensing world" and open access. There are hybrid means of access that need to be enabled. E.g., libraries in developing countries need to be free to take and transform scholarly goods (translation, printing on demand, etc.) We need to remember our constituents include libraries in the developing world.
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Other conference participants who work on access to libraries

  • Michael Birnhack, Senior Lecturer, University of Haifa, Faculty of Law
  • Teresa Hackett, Project Manager, eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries)
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References

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Web Resources

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