WIDWISAWN

The last or more accurately latest entry in Peter Suber’s Timeline of the Open Access Movement is the Scottish Declaration on Open Access. The timeline stretches back to 1966 when ERIC and MEDLINE were first launched, although the Open Archives Initiative was launched only in 1999. Until perhaps 2001 open access was perceived as the preserve of zealots, cranks and librarians, but collectively they began to impact on the academic consciousness even if library backed projects such as SPARC failed to change the model as quickly as had been hoped.

Arguably the tipping point was reached in September 2001 when the Public Library of Science petition expired. Although it failed in its intent of putting research into the public domain six months after commercial publication, over 30,000 academic scientists signed the petition on-line. It was perhaps the first public demonstration that the academy at large recognised that the current model of scholarly communication was failing.

And now that Pandora’s box was open a flurry of activity has followed. Open Access Journals have been launched and seen support from bodies such as the JISC for Biomed Central and PAHO for the Spanish language SCIELO. The Funding agencies have recognised the issue and bodies as varied as the Hughes Institute in the US, the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the Wellcome Institute in the UK have expressed support for open access. And now the legislators are climbing aboard, surely a sign that the bandwagon is rolling. From the House Appropriations Committee in Washington to the Select Committee on Science and Technology in London studies and proposals are emerging – in the US case supported by 25 Nobel Laureates.

All the signs are that we are at the dawn of a new model of scholarly communication. The birth will be messy and the labour may be long and hard, but to mix metaphors the rolling snowball now seems too large and rolling too fast to stop.

And why will it be important to Scotland? We punch above our weight in gaining research grants; we punch above our weight in research ratings for departments. There is now clear evidence that OA articles are more frequently cited. If Scottish based research is made available through open access it will be cited more, which means it will by definition be read more. The hope is that this will in turn lead both to a positive cycle of increased research funding and also to increased inward investment as business recognises the added value of a powerful research base.

Below are just some of the developments that Scotland is spearheading, including the exciting work being undertaken by OATS and the backing offered by COSMIC, to the work of active projects like Theses Alive!, SHERPA, DAEDALUS and HaIRST.