TALKING ABOUT OPEN ACCES

"Knowledge Exchange is a partnership between Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK and SURFfoundation in the Netherlands. Through the years KE has worked to raise awareness of OA and has been contributing to the pile of reports and studies that exist in this area. During 2011 we decided to take a slightly different approach and present the good story peer to peer in order to relate the more fundamental discussion to daily life and reality – a reality that might look different depending on where you are in the food chain. This has resulted in the launching of the oastories.org website. There are known examples of successes, including BioMed Central, the big English Open Access publisher and PLoS (Public Library of Science), a nonprofit publisher and membership organization. What we in KE wanted was to focus on examples where OA has made a difference, a difference to the author, to the publisher and to the end user at the receiving end. We hired a journalist to trace people, journals and organisations with a good story to tell. She followed hints and traces, often directed from one story to another, and we realised that at all levels success stories popped up, telling that publishing OA is a viable option...."