Open_Access

toc =Open Access= See page http://cc4dice.wikispaces.com/Sharing_OA_CC for further elaboration The basic principle of Open Access is expressed, for instance, in this statement by the Swiss National Science Foundation: > ... Research sponsored by public funding should be publicly accessible as far as possible, not least in the interests of science itself. To this end, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has issued provisions on Open access to scientific publications of projects sponsored by the SNSF ... The SNSF also signed the 2003 [|Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities], together with several other Swiss acedemic and research institutions. From the[| list of signatories], as it was last updated on March 24, 2009: This means that Open Access publishing is not only "in the interest of science itself", as the SNSF states, but also an obligation for well-nigh all, or maybe all, Swiss higher education teachers and researchers. =Open Access contributions= But what is an Open Access contribution? From the above-mentioned 2003 [|Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities] : > ... Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material. > Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions: > 1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. > 2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving. ... =Practical implications= or by Further information is available in the SNSF's [|Open Access Dossier] and in the [|Open Access - Laufende Projekte] page - also available [|in French] - of SAGW (Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften - Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences). =Repositories=
 * Universität St. Gallen
 * Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
 * Rektorenkonferenz der Fachhochschulen der Schweiz (KFH)
 * Conférence suisse des rectrices et recteurs des hautes écoles pédagogiques
 * Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung wissenschaftlicher Forschung (SNF) - Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique (FNS)
 * Akademien der Wissenschaften Schweiz
 * Conférence des Recteurs des Universités Suisses, Conferenza dei Rettori delle Università Svizzere, Rektorenkonferenz der Schweizer Universitäten
 * Universität Zürich, and
 * CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research - Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire).
 * The first condition** in this definition means that academics and researchers, when they write for a publisher or a scientific journal, must make sure that the contract entitles them to grant this right of access and license to use, disseminate and modify their work. This can be achieved by
 * publishing in an Open Access journal (the "golden way"); Lunds University has published a [|Directory of Open Access Journals] ; the [|Public Library of Science (PLoS)] also has a list of Open Access scientific journals.
 * introducing a clause to that effect in a contract with a traditional publisher (the "green way").
 * The second condition** means that:
 * authors must remember to add the permission statement in their work before they put it online - in fact, even if the repository they choose enables them to state this permission in the description of the work, if the work itself does not contain it, then it will be covered by default by strict copyright law dispositions when it gets disseminated;
 * authors should publish their works in a repository (see below) that is suitable, both in terms of academic seriousness, and technically (i.e. configured with metadata facilitating further indexing by Open Access portals). However, if their institution does not have - or does not participate in - such a repository, they can also publish their works in their personal page / site, though this last solution is less satisfactory for indexing by Open Access portals.

Swiss repositories
A list of suitable Swiss academic Open Access repositories is given in the [|Open Access in Switzerland] page of the DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) wiki, which will be regularly updated. In its present state (last change: 8-May-2009, at 13:19), this list includes:
 * [|Alexandria Research Platform], University of St. Gallen
 * [|Archive ouverte UNIGE], University of Geneva
 * [|Bibliothèque Numérique RERO DOC], Library Network of Western Switzerland
 * [|CERN Document Server], CERN
 * [|Codices Electronici Sangallenses] ,Stiftsbibliothek St.Gallen / University of Fribourg
 * [|DigiBern], Bernese Culture and Histroy on the Web
 * [|e-codices], University of Fribourg
 * [|edoc], University of Basel
 * [|edudoc.ch], Schweizerischer Dokumentenserver Bildung
 * [|ETH E-Collection], Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
 * [|Infoscience], École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
 * [|MSF Field Research], Médecins sans Frontières (MSF)
 * [|Reproducible Research Repository], LCAV and EPFL
 * [|SEALS], Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries
 * [|Serval], University of Lausanne
 * [|ZORA]URL:http://www.zora.uzh.ch/. Accessed: 2010-01-10. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5mfsWyUeH), University of Zurich

By discipline
There are also international thematic repositories. For instance, SAGW (Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften - Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences) has published two lists of such repositories: But there are several other thematic depositories, for instance [|arXiv.org] : "arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics. The contents of arXiv conform to Cornell University academic standards...."
 * [|Repositories in den Sozialwissenschaften](PDF 01.12.2009; 123 KB)
 * [|OA-Disciplinary-Repositories (auf www.open-access.net)] (PDF 16.06.2009; 71 KB) (the source of the latter, http://www.open-access.net, also lists repositories for other disciplines).

General
The generic hosting platforms that might perhaps be used as Open Access repositories, in case an institution does not have one, or access to one, are too numerous to be listed here. However, one of them seems particularly fit for this purpose:

Internet Archive
The [|Internet Archive] is an open repository where anyone can publish Moving Images (films, videos), Texts and Audio files, and the description of its [|Texts] section explicitly defines it as an " Open-Access Text Archive". Moreover:
 * The information entered when you upload files to an item produces a metadata file that is as complete as your input, and which users can access.
 * You get prompted to add a Creative Commons license (see Creative Commons chapter [add link]) in the description of items, and hence one that is compatible with the definition of an Open Access contribution by the 2003 [|Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities].
 * It is possible to create a collection of items in case of a large number of files, as explained in [|I want to add LOTS of individual items to the archive, how do i do that?] in the Internet Archive FAQs, and the existing collections listed under "Sub-Collections" in the mentioned [|Texts] section.

Therefore, in practice, the Internet Archive could be used to create an Open Access repository when an academic/research institution does not have one (or access to one). Its capability for gathering specific meta-data and the possibility to create collections would make it a better solution for indexing and retrieval by Open Access search engines than, e.g., listing publications on researchers/teachers' personal pages in their institution's site. However, it remains to be seen whether academic/research institutions that do not have an official Open Access repositors (or access to one) would agree to this alternative solution. =Users' rights and Swiss Open Access Repositories= (add bibliographical footnotes to all links for this section - 1263036532)

SAGW-ASSH's checklist
[|SAGW-ASSH] has published a very useful Checklist of the most important points for implementing Open Access (OA), available in [|German] and in [|French]. This list covers legal and technical aspects, and gives criteria for the choice of a repository.

This SAGW-ASSH's checklist tells authors they should "add a Creative Commons (CC) license on their article or journal"before uploading it to an Open Access depository. Actually, a CCs license is a simple way to implement the requirement to indicate the rights users have, as stipulated in the [|Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities], but not all CC licenses are suitable , and another license fitting the requirements of the Berlin Declaration would be suitable too.

Swiss OA Repositories
Among the 15 Swiss Open Access (OA) repositories listed above, only 9 let researchers, students and teachers of educational institutions upload their works :
 * Alexandria Research Platform, University of St. Gallen
 * Archive ouverte UNIGE, University of Geneva
 * Bibliothèque Numérique RERO DOC, Library Network of Western Switzerland
 * edoc, University of Basel
 * ETH E-Collection, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
 * Infoscience, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
 * Reproducible Research Repository, LCAV and EPFL
 * Serval, University of Lausanne
 * ZORA, University of Zurich

Statement about users' rights
Out of these 9 repositories, some have an explicit and clearly indicated statement about users' rights in their web site, some don't. Of course, this statement is only required for contributions and not for repositories' sites. However, while a systematic review of all contributions in all Swiss OA repositories is beyond the scope of this chapter, there seems to be a correlation between the presence or absence of this statement in repositories' sites and in the contributions they contain. Let us look at two cases:

Site
In the site of [|Archive ouverte UNIGE], the Open Access Repository of Geneva University, the [|Copyright et Open Access] page, linked to in the navigation menu, specifies users' rights in a summerized form of the Berlin Declaration: > ... Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, search, print and create links to the full text, for all use, without any restriction but with quotation obligation....

Contributions
The description page of every contribution succinctly specifies whether access is free, restricted for some time after its original publication, or not available. From it, the above-mentioned [|Copyright et Open Access] page can be opened in a single click. Contributions themselves all have the same template for their first page: This solution gives users all the information they need about what they can and cannot do with each contribution, and facilitates the indication of these permissions and restrictions for contributors.
 * reference to the Archive Ouverte + its URL
 * title
 * author
 * abstract
 * proper bibliographical reference
 * link to their description page in the Archive Ouverte

Site
[|Bibliothèque Numérique RERO DOC] is the Library Network of Western Switzerland (plus Ticino). The [|How to deposit] page of its site does contains a short section about copyright issues, but it is exclusively related to clearing rights with the original publisher: it says nothing about users' rights.

Contributions
There is no uniformed first page template for contributions, and the Berlin Declaration's requirement of a statement of users' rights is often ignored. For instance, out of the 73 theses from one of the Universities that use DOC RERO, 9 have a strict copyright notice (in contradiction with this requirement) and 64 have no statement at all, which is equivalent to a strict copyright notice.

Remarks
The observations above about Archive ouverte UNIGE and RERO DOC were written in January 2010. The configurations of these and other repositories could change in future. However, the point to remember is that authors of Open Access contributions must inform users - within the contributions - about what they can and cannot do with them. If the repository makes this indication easier, all the better. Otherwise, authors must find other ways to give it: for instance, by using an appropriate Creative Commons license, as suggested by SWAG-ASSH. =In nuce=
 * Open Access publishing is a great opportunity for academic exchange, and for university researchers and teachers to increase their readership, and to get feedback.
 * In Switzerland, Open Access publishing is an obligation for well-nigh all, or maybe all, higher education teachers and researchers
 * When you prepare a text for Open Access publishing, remember to indicate within your text the permission foreseen by the by the 2003 [|Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities], even if the repository you use already prompts you to add a license already granting these rights in the description of your text.
 * If your institution has an Open Access repository, or access to one (e.g. RERO DOC), use that.
 * If not, add your texts to your personal page on the institution's web site.
 * If this is not possible either, ask your institution / relevant education authorities about using platforms like the Internet Archives.
 * When in doubt about an aspect of Open Access publishing even after checking the resources mentioned here, ask them too.

=Comments from CC-CH team= To be integrated in the text:

(If your text editing software does not read ODT files, you can open this one with [|Google Docs], then download it from there in the format you prefer).

(page in construction 1263253155)