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IFLA Article International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 2019, Vol. 45(3) 233–245 Advancing scholarly publishing ª The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: through open access biomedical sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0340035219846139 repositories: A knowledge journals.sagepub.com/home/ifl management perspective Lisa Kruesi Monash University, Australia Kerry Tanner Monash University, Australia Frada Burstein Monash University, Australia Abstract Scholarly publishing has undergone major changes over the past 50 years. Funder mandates and organisational reporting obligations have heralded the creation of open access repositories, such as institutional and subject repositories. This research draws upon the US PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC, also known as PMC International, as a role model to inform the concept and opportunity for an Australasia open access biomedical repository. PMC International is a leader in making citations and research output, which link to research data, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). As repositories approach two decades of development, this paper reports on the potential for an Australasia open access biomedical repository through a knowledge management lens and explores the opportunities for future open access biomedical repositories. Keywords Australasia, Europe PMC, evidence-based healthcare model, knowledge management, open access biomedical repositories, open science, PMC, PMC international, PubMed Central, scholarly publishing Submitted: 19 January 2019; Accepted: 1 April 2019. Introduction full-text biomedical research, making the results of Open access repositories worldwide have emerged as a the National Institutes of Health’s research openly trusted platform for accessing and managing scholarly and permanently available (Roberts, 2001). PubMed research output. In late 2000, institutional repositories linked to PMC makes research evidence in the bio- were set up in Australian universities to provide access medical sciences accessible throughout the world to research collections (Steele, 2013). In line with the (Williamson and Minter, 2019). US and Europe, in pursuing open access publishing, A decade later, PMC nodes were established in the requirement of key Australian funding bodies for Europe and Canada, forming the PMC International authors to publish the results of their research openly put the pressure on universities to manage this process using institutional repositories. Corresponding author: Lisa Kruesi, Monash University, Level7,BuildingH,Caulfield Another significant repository development Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, Victoria VIC occurred in 2000, when the US PubMed Central 3145, Australia. (PMC) commenced as a disciplinary repository of Email: [email protected] 234 IFLA Journal 45(3) Figure 1. Chronology of scholarly publishing trends and developments (Compiled by L Kruesi). (US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes Academic libraries throughout Australia spent of Health, 2018b). Whilst Australian university insti- approximately $282m in 2017 on access to subscrip- tutional repositories exist, the Australasia region lacks tion journals to support students, researchers and practi- a consolidated repository to make biomedical and tioners (Council of Australian University Librarians and health sciences research accessible, discoverable, Australasian Open Access Strategy Group, 2018). Over interoperable and permanently findable. the past decade, many academic libraries have needed to This paper reports on an investigation into the con- cancel subscriptions in order to free up funds for new cept and opportunity for establishing an open biome- titles. In addition to the struggle to maintain subscrip- dical repository in the Australasian region, such as a tions, library managers are required to sign contracts PMC repository, from a knowledge management that forbid them disclosing publisher fees (Sample, (KM) perspective. An Australasia PMC could poten- 2012) therefore the costs of the existing scholarly pub- tially include biomedical research output with an Aus- lishing system are not transparent. tralian, New Zealand and Pacific Islands focus. The Presently aggregator online library search plat- Evidence-based Healthcare (EBHC) pyramid is the forms that evolved from library catalogues are set model adopted to investigate the knowledge transfer up to adhere to publisher contracts. The library search and dissemination role of a PMC. systems lock down collections and databases using paywalls, ultimately restricting the access, reading, citing and translating of research into practice. Background For over 350 years, scholarly journal articles have Advancing scholarly publishing been the chosen means to disseminate new knowl- literature review edge, register research findings, review and certify results, preserve a record, add to the existing body This review highlights key research articles that of knowledge and act as a measure for determining explain and distinguish the roles of repositories pro- academic promotion (Fyfe et al., 2015). viding research output. The status of research reposi- Over the period from 1970 until the 1990s, there tories in Australia and the world perspective are was a shift from personal subscriptions towards summarized. Key research articles on PubMed and library-provided journal access (Tenopir and King, PMC’s evolution are included to give perspective on 1998). Around this time sales of large portfolios of their role in advancing scholarly publishing. electronic journal content sold through consortia arrangements to libraries was the major means to Repositories acquire research collections. Figure 1 provides a In early 2000, around the time of the Budapest Open chronology of scholarly publishing trends and devel- Access Initiative, the focus was on making peer- opments since 1970. reviewed scholarly journal articles accessible via the Kruesi et al.: Advancing scholarly publishing through open access biomedical repositories 235 Internet from institutional and subject repositories (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), and RePEc such as PMC (Sequeira et al., 2001). By late 2000, (Research Papers in Economics http://repec.org/). in addition to journal articles, the content of books and book chapters, conference papers, theses, work- ing papers, preprints, learning objects and rich media Status ‘Down Under’ and world perspective files were becoming openly accessible from reposi- Library services in the medical sector are a small part tories. The fundamental goals of opening up research of a massive healthcare system in Australia that con- output relate to pursuing transparency of research sumes over $147bn a year (Australian Government methods, reusability of research processes, open com- Productivity Commission, 2015; Brooks, 2011). It is munication and public accessibility via the Internet currently difficult to report comprehensively on the (Gezelter, 2009). state of health sciences research output throughout A digital repository is a set of systems and services Australian universities, hospitals, medical institutes that ingest, store, manage, display, retrieve and allow and health care centres. Australian health practitioner reuse of digital objects (Pinfield et al., 2014). Institu- information is stored in silos and because of this doc- tions, subject communities and research funders pre- tors, nurses and allied health professionals make clin- dominantly set up repositories to provide access to ical decisions based on an array of sources (Four digital objects (Pinfield, 2009). Aggregators actively Corners ABC, 2015). Australia publishes on average harvest data from multiple sources such as reposi- 50,000 biomedical and health sciences research arti- tories, and make repositories searchable and available cles annually (Elsevier BV, 2017). Medical research in a uniform way (Przybyła et al., 2016). Open access consumes a significant investment of $5.9bn annually literature is content that is online, digital, free of of Australian public money (Research Australia, charges and without most of the copyright and licen- 2016). In 2007–2009, the Australian Government admi- sing restrictions (Suber, 2015). nistered the Australian Scheme for Higher Education A subject or disciplinary repository is defined as a Repositories (ASHER) programme, during which repository ‘that collects and provides access to the digital institutional repositories throughout Australian literature of a single subject or a set of related sub- universities received $26m. ‘Enhancing access to jects’ (Huber and Swogger, 2014: 71). According to research through the use of digital repositories’ was Bjo¨rk (2014), subject repositories may contain article the aim of ASHER, though at the time much of the metadata, as well as research data and full text of allocation was assigned to developing closed collec- scholarly publications which is available free of tions for the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) charge and is searchable by web robots. project (Steele, 2013). Subject and national repositories help scholars to Regardless of the vast investment in establishing navigate the vast amount of knowledge, though insti- and operating repositories throughout Australia, most tutional repositories have been less successful as out- of the university repositories, according to the Direc- lets for this endeavour (Armbruster and Romary, tor of the Australian Open Access Strategy Group, 2009). Institutional