This document discusses open access in Europe, highlighting current gaps and challenges. It notes that while there is broad participation in open access through institutional repositories and open access journals, uptake of repositories remains low without incentives. Authors also often sign away their copyright to publishers of prestigious journals. The system remains difficult to change as long as funders prioritize high impact factor journals. SPARC Europe promotes alternative models of quality evaluation and open access publishing to help drive change. Open access also provides opportunities for public and national libraries to increase readership among citizens, though digital and scientific literacy must be improved.

2. Open Access in Europe: gaps to bridge
and challenges to pick up
Astrid van Wesenbeeck
SPARC Europe

3. SPARC Europe
European (Research) Library Association
Advocacy and education to contribute to the
Open Access Movement

4. TODAY
1. Awareness & participation
2. Open Access Monographs
3. Open Access and Public Libraries

7. Some conditional facts
• Broad network of Institutional Repositories
– 1960 European Repositories registered in the Directory of
OA Repositories (www.doar.org)
• Open Access journals and Open Access publishers
– Public Library of Science (PloS) / BiomedCentral / Springer
Open / Sage Open / Hindawi
– 6545 Open Access Journals registered in the Directory of
Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org)

8. Open Access Policies
• 120 institutional Open Access mandates
• 48 funders Open Access mandates
(Source: http://roarmap.eprints.org/)

9. Reality check
• Low uptake in use of Institutional Repository
– No incentives > mandates
• Authors sign away their copyright to publishers
– Publishers of prestigious journals require this and use copyright to
lock up content
• Many authors publish in High Impact Factor journals when
possible and these journals are most of time not Open Access
and belong to toll‐access publishers
– Because they have to from their superiors / funders
Difficult to create a change

10. The system:
• As long as funders and superiors
Universities, funding agencies and professors
• Tell their grants / researchers to publish in
High Impact Factor Journals
Because there is no alternative
• It will be difficult to create a change
And Open Access journals will have a hard time to
“enter the market”.

11. SPARC Europe:
• Promotes projects that develop alternative quality measurement models
– MESUR www.mesur.org
• Promotes new forms of research evaluation that aim directly at the
quality of scholarly articles and books, rather than indirect measures
based on average journal performance, e.g. the impact factor
– PLoS: article metrics http://article‐level‐metrics.plos.org/
• Supports and promotes Open Access publishing
– Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association www.oaspa.org
• Considers and promotes the CC‐BY license as best practice for Open
Access
– SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals

12. Monographs in scholarly
communication

13. Situation
• Monographs: still important in the humanities
and the social sciences
• High journal subscription prizes led to less
academic book acquirement by libraries (less
support for printed library collections)
• Which led to a crisis at many publishing
houses; producing monographs became too
expensive

15. Open Access Book Publishing
in European Networks: OAPEN
An EC funded project that aimed to develop an
academic Open Access Monograph publishing model
– 1 publishing infrastructure
– Publishers that meet quality requirement (peer review)
can join the network and keep their autonomy
– All published books appear in the OAPEN library
www.oapen.org
– Books are reviewed, online and free to read and use: great
opportunities with regard to data linking and other
possibilities the internet offers
– Libraries can use the metadata for their catalogues:

18. Open Access and public
& national libraries
OPEN ACCESS?

19. Opportunities?
Dutch study shows that OA leads to an increase of
readership amongst citizens
But they need three types of literacy: information,
digital and scientific literacy
Source: The layperson and Open Access to Scholarly
Research – A report on Civic Scientific Literacy
DOI: 10.1002/aris.2009.1440430115
Bridging and bring science to society; the scientific
community has a lot to win as well
They will have to explain the value of their research more
and more

20. Thank you for listening!
Astrid.vanwesenbeeck@kb.nl
www.sparceurope.org
www.twitter.org/sparc_eu
http://linkd.in/a9enCM