BOAI Celebrates One Year Anniversary

• Update
• What you can do to celebrate

Update

The BOAI launched one year ago today, February 14, 2002. Here is a quick review of some of the projects supported by the Open Society Institute over the first year of the initiative:

1. Development of open access business guides. The SPARC Consulting Group has developed a Guide to Business Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access, and a Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/index.shtml. For additional details, please see today’s press release: http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=f67.

2. Directory of open access journals will be produced and maintained by the Lund University Library: http://www.lub.lu.se/lucep/activities/doaj/index.html. For additional details, please see the recent press release: http://www.doaj.org/documents/press-release_030214_en.html

3. Pilot project to support authors from the OSI region to publish articles in open access journals. 40 open access journals are taking part in the pilot support scheme. The program will be continued in 2003: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/grants.shtml#journals.

4. Pilot project to support BioMed Central (BMC) Institutional Memberships, which will allow authors from institutions to publish articles in BMC free of charge. Institutions within the OSI region can apply to OSI for support. A total of 50 grants to institutions will be made through this program. 12 institutions already received grants in 2002: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/grants.shtml#biomed.

5. Workshop to discuss open access journals with learned society publishers. OSI sponsored a workshop for the members of the UK-based Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) in September 2002: http://www.alpsp.org/s130902.htm.

6. Conference of the Academies of Sciences to introduce the benefits of open access publishing. The conference was held in Budapest from January 16-18, 2003. 24 Academies from the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and China participated: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/meeting.shtml.

7. Support speakers and selected participants to attend international conferences to spread awareness of the benefits of open access. OSI has supported the attendance of speakers at various international conferences including: the 2nd Workshop on the Open Archives Initiative, held at CERN (http://library.cern.ch/Announcement.htm); and the First Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communications (http://www.lub.lu.se/ncsc2002/).

8. Development of the Academic Contributor Information System (ACIS), which will create a relational dataset between authors and their publications and institutions. This information will assist in building awareness of the benefits of institutional repositories. OSI is collaborating with the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University on this project: http://acis.openlib.org/.

9. Free Online Scholarship newsletter, written by Peter Suber, was supported from October 2001-August 2002: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm.

10. User’s manual for Eprints2, an Open Archives Initiative compliant software, will be developed. The manual will assist in the development of institutional repositories.

Here are some suggestions:

* Subscribe to the BOAI Forum: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml.

* Spread the word about the BOAI. Ask your colleagues and institution to sign the initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/sign.shtml.

* Talk to colleagues about the open-access projects, or impediments, in your institution or discipline. Write about them. Applaud the progress, identify the obstacles, answer the skeptics, and educate the next generation of researchers.

* If you're not currently participating in an open-access project, consider joining or starting one. Remember that the BOAI is not just a public statement, now one year old. It's a continuing initiative trying to enlist the assistance and participation of its signatories and trying to recruit new signatories willing to help. Launch an open-access archive at your institution. Help launch an open-access journal or convert a traditional journal. Archive your own papers, persuade your colleagues to do the same, and persuade your institution to adopt a policy to encourage it. If you're looking for other ideas, look at the BOAI list of ways to advance the cause: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/help.shtml.

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