“Stop discriminating against Open Access publications in research evaluation”

Position: University Professor
Expertise: applied statistics, research methods, biometry, information science
Institution: University of Zagreb
Country: Croatia
More info: LinkedIn Other
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6721-7250
An interview with Prof Diana Šimić on 17 January 2016
What were some of your first encounters with Open Access (OA)?
When I became a member of the Croatian delegation to the Preparatory Process of the World Summit on Information Society in Geneva (and later Tunis), I naturally supported Open Access. During the preparatory meetings in Geneva, I met Prof. Francis Muguet (who deceased in 2009), who vigorously promoted Open Access in the EU’s member states. After a dramatic evening of lobbying at the last planned WSIS Preparatory Meeting, we managed to include Open Access in the text of the Genevan Declaration of Principles – Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new millennium.
What Open Access activities are you currently involved in?
Why, in your opinion, do we need Open Access to research?
Even the richest research organisations cannot afford to purchase access to all of the world’s relevant research literature. At the same time, research results from large areas of the globe are being totally ignored. These problems cannot be solved by using a traditional approach to scientific publishing.
“The free flow of research results is a necessary precondition for meeting the new global challenges of today.”
In addition, many countries are investing large sums of public money in scientific research where some results are not even available to the public due to commercial publisher copyright protection. The free flow of research results is a necessary precondition for meeting the new global challenges of today, such as climate change, population growth and aging, global criminal and terrorist organisations, clean drinking water supply … to name a few.
Can Open Access have a positive effect on research careers?
What can scholars and/or administration do to promote openness to research?
Another way that administrations can help is by setting up repositories and archives of Open Access to scientific publications and data.
Funding organisations should also require research results of publicly funded research – including data – to be made publicly available in Open Access repositories.
What are the challenges in OA advocacy and what still needs to be done?
I believe that academic employment and promotion criteria should embrace Open Access. More funding agency support for Open Access is also key for global take-up. In the meantime, acceptance of Open Access is growing. It is a process, and it is important to work on advocating it amongst all stakeholders to keep it growing!
Copyright: Prof Diana Šimić, University of Zagreb. Creative Commons CC-BY Licence.
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