Open Access to Sri Lankan Research and Scholarly Articles

Harvard University, one of the best funded research University in world, found it difficult to subscribe to academic Journals, as online research information providers have increased their subscription fees by more than 100% in recent years, said Heather Joshph, Executive Director of Scholarly and Academic Resource Coalition (SPARC), USA, at a Seminar organized by National Science Foundation, Sri Lanka today (30 April 2013) in Colombo. Because of inaccessibility of required journals Scientists all over the world are now conducting research on what they have access to (reading only abstracts of papers or skipping some papers), rather than what they might need to know. Hence teachers will teach students on what they have accessed to rather than what students might ought to know.

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The workshop inauguration was held at Cinnamon Grand Hotel with the participation of Hon Tissa Witharana, Senior Minister of Science and Technology and Prof Sirimalee Fernando, Chairperson, NSF. The workshop was held at National Science Foundation Auditorium, Colombo 7. Prof Ajith de Alwis and Prof Gihan Dias were also participated.

Minister Prof Tissa Vitharana Speaks. In the Photo Prof Ajith de Alwis and Ms. Heather Joshph — Minister Prof Tissa Vitharana Speaks

Open Access movement begun in Budapest in 2002 which facilitate a system of free availability of research material so that any user can read, download, cope, distribute, print, search or link the full text of research articles. Heather said that “In short open access means access and reuse of materials.”

Sri Lankan Universities and research institutes have started publishing their data online in two forms

Open Access Journals

Eg. Sri Lanka Medical Journal, Journal of Tropical Forestry and Environment, NSF Journals

Open Access digital repositories

These repositories can be either insitittional ( eg. University of Sri Jayewardnepura Digital Library) or central (eg. NSF repository/ Digital Library).

Though open access publishing in only just over a decade old, but already we can see exponential growth in digital publishing, she explained.

Policy and copyright issues should be important in digital publishing. Harvard University has taken a policy decision to distribute work by Harvard academics online as far as possible and request scientists to deposit a copy of a published article in the Institute repository as open access material.

Also US university students are required to hand over digital version of their research thesis, and the library of the University will publish them online on the web.

Heather said that in next 4-5 years more than half of the published data will be available as open access material on the web.