[BOAI] A report on open access and repositories from Japan's MEXT.

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Shuto Makoto, via the JISC-Repositories list.  --Peter
Suber.]


Dear colleagues,

I am glad to have an opportunity to let you know that Japan's Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) released a report
of the discussion of open access to scholarly research results on a
workgroup for scholarly communication infrastructure in July.

Unfortunately, as we have no official English translation of the report,
you may not be able to have direct full access to it, but hoping its URLs
will be a help, let me quote them:

(Executive Summary)

http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/gijyutu/gijyutu4/toushin/attach/1323861.htm

(Full text)

http://www.mext.go.jp/component/b_menu/shingi/toushin/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2012/08/02/1323890_1_1.pdf

The workgroup, chaired by Professor Setsuo Arikawa, President, Kyushu
University, consists of experts and scholars in scholarly communication,
and discusses topics including university libraries, campus computing and
networking within the scheme of MEXT's Council of Science, Technology and
Scholarship.

It has spent about a year working on the issues around society publishing,
open access and institutional repositories and compiled the report, which
comprises five chapters:

1. the provision of scholarly communication infrastructure and the
enhancement of dissemination and communication of scholarly information;

2. the remodeling of a category in the JSPS grand-in-aids for the
improved dissemination of scholarly outcomes by way of periodical
publication;

3. the promotion of open access to research results from competitively
funded research activities;

4. the enhancement of the scholarly dissemination by way of institutional
repositories;

5. the improved collaboration among the government controlled agencies
involved scholarly communication, including the National Institute of
Informatics(NII), Japan Science and Technolgy Agency(JST), the National
Diet Library(NDL) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(JSPS).

Chapter 1 introduces the range of topics and explains the backgrounds.

Chapter 2 proposes a remodeling of the category in the funding scheme for
journal publishing which has been mainly made use of by Japanese society
publishers to compensate for deficits in their publishing operations. The
proposed new model focuses on enhanced contribution to the increased
variety and future sustainability of the scholarly communication worldwide
by the scholarly publishing activities which originate in Japan. Within the
proposed scheme, which, as a whole, replaces the foregoing subsidies for
print periodical publishing, there is a new category earmarked for projects
that aim at a launch of or a conversion to open access publishing model.

Chapter 3 endorses the importance of the open access to research results in
general and to those funded by public subsidies in particular and discusses
the various methods for its implementation, from "golden" open access
journal publishing to "green" open access by way of repositories, and
suggests that, for the time being, institutional repositories be to be made
full use of as a means of making research available to society.

Chapter 4 discusses the current status and future perspectives of
institutional repositories implemented by universities, colleges and
research institutions in Japan. More than 250 educational and research
institutions, which account for a quarter of such organizations, were
started in last five years and now provide, open to the public, more than
one million full text scholarly achievements including peer reviewed
journal articles, unrefreed but academically substantial outcomes from the
faculty, theses and dissertations, learning materials and scientific data.
The report takes the repositories seriously as a platform for institutional
accountability and scientific dissemination and requests the institutions
and their researchers to support the continued and upgraded operation of
repositories.

Chapter 5 discusses and recommends a set of possible, and partly realized,
collaborations among the different institutions with different backgrounds
which, though, work in the field of scholarly communication.

Those of you who are interested in further details in the absence of the
official English translation may post specific questions to this list in
the hope that some of my colleagues will reply.


====================
SHUTO Makoto

Chieff, University Library Unit
Office for Science Information Infrastructure
Information Division, Research Promotion Bureau
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
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