Draft CWB statement open access and open source science

Chemists Without Borders has publicly released the July 27 draft of its Position Statement on Open Access and Open Source Science. Excerpt:

Synopsis

Within the vision of Chemists Without Borders, Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature is the library, a global library with equal access to our shared knowledge for all. Open Access is necessary to development of equitable access to chemistry education and research opportunities in both the developed and developing world. CWB strongly supports Open Access, as defined in the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda statements, and the measures necessary to implement open access, such as funding agencies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund, and educating researchers about Open Access.

Open Source Science promises more rapid advances in research through open sharing of research information at all stages of the research process. Open Source Science means more opportunities for collaboration, whether to facilitate CWB projects or provide researchers with more opportunities for participation in international research collaborations. CWB strongly supports Open Source Science within the context of Open Access.

Open Access

Definition (from the Budapest Open Access Initiative):  "By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."

True Open Access means free availability immediately on publication, or before as preprints....There are two main approaches to Open Access. Articles can be made openly accessible on publication by the journals themselves, using one of a variety of business models (OA publishing, or the gold road). Or, authors can publish in subscription-based journals, and self-archive their work in an open access archive or repository (self-archiving, or the green road).

Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature advances the vision of Chemists Without Borders in several ways. Indeed, with respect to this literature, open access epitomizes Chemistry Literature Without Borders, as it means equal, barrier-free access to scholarly knowledge for everyone, everywhere....

Open Source Science

There are many approaches to the sharing of scientific information throughout the research process; CWB encourages experimentation with approaches that meet the criteria of open access along with open source. One example is blogging of experiments....

Suggested Actions

Educate chemists and chemistry students about open access and open source science, for example through the CWB blog and newsletter.

Create an open archive for chemistry; help develop and support policies requiring deposit of research articles, for example funders' and universities' policies (note: some resources – technology, expertise – required).

Write letters to funding agencies supporting open access policy initiatives in development, for example the Federal Research to Public Access Act in the U.S.

Encourage chemists to publish in open access journals and/or self-archive their work. Encourage chemistry publishers to move to open access business models and revise authors' agreement to facilitate self-archiving.

CWB will vote on the statement at its next meeting, probably in mid-October.