0:00:06.320,0:00:10.320 Hello, I'm Arianna Becerril Garcia 0:00:10.320,0:00:15.760 I'm very honoured to be part of this year's Open  and Engaged conference. Thank you very much for 0:00:15.760,0:00:26.080 the invitation. And today I would like to share my  ideas on this open access publishing model which 0:00:26.080,0:00:33.840 is academia-owned and APC-free, as a way to leverage  sustainable and equitable scholarly communications 0:00:33.840,0:00:42.000 I am speaking from the Latin American perspective  and particularly from the perspective of these two 0:00:42.000,0:00:49.920 initiatives that I represent today - Redalyc and  AmeliCA. And I would like to start by saying that 0:00:49.920,0:00:57.840 17 years after the Budapest Open Access  Initiative we are facing, or we are seeing, a very 0:00:58.880,0:01:04.240 well increasing control of the knowledge  production circuit by commercial publishers 0:01:05.360,0:01:13.440 We are witnessing as well restrictions on the  rise. Restrictions on where, when or how to deposit 0:01:14.160,0:01:25.840 We are also facing a very slow and inefficient  transition to digital technologies by the 0:01:25.840,0:01:33.920 publishing sector and we are in the middle - as researchers and platforms and journal editors - 0:01:33.920,0:01:42.160 of a very damaging research assessment system.  The industry of prestige which is mainly based 0:01:42.160,0:01:50.240 on impact factor metrics or similar deficient  metrics, and which is based on proprietary services 0:01:50.240,0:01:56.960 where the great majority of the best ranked  publications - let's say on for example 0:01:56.960,0:02:04.480 Web of Science or Scopus - by the way that are considered the mainstream databases - 0:02:04.480,0:02:10.800 are published by commercial corporations and with a concerning lack 0:02:10.800,0:02:17.680 of visibility of publications published in  countries from the Global South. 0:02:17.680,0:02:26.320 Around 10-12% of our journals from the Global  South are present in those considered mainstream 0:02:27.360,0:02:35.200 databases so it's very concerning. And I have to  say that this is not because of lack of quality 0:02:35.200,0:02:42.320 this is because we have or we are running  different - let's say parallel models - and different 0:02:42.320,0:02:52.560 approaches to conceptualize scholarly  communication. So in this sense, we all know 0:02:52.560,0:03:03.360 that a flip from pay-to-read to pay-to-publish is  being intended in terms of achieving open access 0:03:04.640,0:03:08.480 soon. So initiatives like  Plan S, for example, which are 0:03:10.160,0:03:17.680 really based on transformative agreements, we are seeing the effect is to cause this 0:03:17.680,0:03:26.720 transformation but I have to say that  this is going to transport or transfer the 0:03:26.720,0:03:34.320 restrictions from one phase to another phase.  So a new exclusionary landscape is emerging 0:03:36.800,0:03:43.440 The exclusion now will be for the authors  or less resourced researchers that are now 0:03:43.440,0:03:51.120 are going to be excluded. And please don't think  that discounts or waiving fees are sufficient 0:03:51.120,0:03:58.560 because this is exactly the way the the subscription model was designed before 0:03:58.560,0:04:07.200 with discounts and waiving fees for some regions or some  institutions or some individuals, which are not 0:04:07.200,0:04:15.120 advantaged to pay. But this is not exactly the  solution - we have seen this story. So once again 0:04:15.120,0:04:20.480 less resourced researchers are going to be  excluded, and countries and academic institutions 0:04:20.480,0:04:27.200 and the research community do not have any control  beyond commercial agreements. And this is exactly 0:04:28.240,0:04:35.280 the history of the subscription model so  we have to think - is it really the way it 0:04:35.280,0:04:41.360 was supposed to be? The transference of the  restrictions from one phase of the knowledge 0:04:41.360,0:04:48.000 generation process to another was intended?  I believe that science should be a global 0:04:48.000,0:04:57.760 participatory and equitable conversation and  we should work towards that premise. So I agree 0:04:57.760,0:05:03.600 as well with this citation that says the debate  on open access is a debate about the future of 0:05:03.600,0:05:11.040 of academia so we have to be very creative  and very serious on how we are shaping 0:05:11.040,0:05:20.560 the future of open access because it will impact  directly into the future of academia. So we have 0:05:20.560,0:05:29.520 or at least let's think - and I know this  is not a binary question - but please think on 0:05:29.520,0:05:34.880 these two approaches where some business  models and some publishing models are 0:05:34.880,0:05:42.880 more based on science as a commodity, and some  others are based on science as a public good 0:05:43.440,0:05:50.560 And this second is exactly the one that  has been run by Latin American institutions 0:05:50.560,0:05:57.280 So I'm going to talk about this a little later.  And I would like to to notice here that 0:05:58.320,0:06:07.920 in the sciences a commodity approach we can  see a very active university rankings for 0:06:07.920,0:06:17.040 example, we can see all journal rankings,  they are owned by commercial companies - 0:06:18.320,0:06:24.720 the rankings and the publications. It is  more impact factor-based research assessment 0:06:24.720,0:06:32.320 We see here the transformative agreement with  the lack of APCs, and in the other approach - 0:06:32.320,0:06:42.160 or approaches - we can see a very active community of  universities and academic institutions that are 0:06:42.160,0:06:53.760 running publications which are APC-free, which  allow multilingual functionalities, and which 0:06:53.760,0:07:03.360 is leveraged by technology. This second  approach is on which Redalyc and AmeliCA relies 0:07:03.360,0:07:10.000 on to operate. So we have to ask which  approach will enable equity if there 0:07:10.000,0:07:16.320 are diversity, immediate open access, no pay to  read, no fee for authors, neither for readers, 0:07:16.320,0:07:23.600 controlled by the academic community, and which  approach will enable or will sustain publishing 0:07:25.920,0:07:30.720 What role will the academic community play to  face this challenge? What will be the role of 0:07:30.720,0:07:40.160 universities and libraries? I don't like to think  of universities to be only managers of contracts 0:07:40.160,0:07:46.480 or agreements as I am also a Professor in the  Autonomous University of State of Mexico I like 0:07:46.480,0:07:53.680 to see the faculty, the community of the  university involved in constructing together 0:07:55.920,0:08:01.360 the publishing sector, scholarly  communications in general. So especially 0:08:02.800,0:08:10.160 because we are living in this digital  era where technologies enable a different 0:08:10.160,0:08:18.720 scenario that can bring the potential to new  models to be competitive and even disruptive 0:08:19.680,0:08:27.680 And this is what we are doing in Latin  America. Latin America historically has created 0:08:27.680,0:08:35.520 and has maintained a non-commercial infrastructure  where scientific publishing belongs to academic 0:08:35.520,0:08:43.520 institutions and not to large publishers. Where you don't find fees for authors 0:08:43.520,0:08:51.440 nor for readers in this a editorial tradition,  which means that every institution supports 0:08:51.440,0:08:55.760 journals that are driven by their  own faculty members - so a professor, 0:08:57.520,0:09:06.400 a member of the community can run a journal with a  internal editorial team - which means that they know 0:09:06.400,0:09:15.200 how to run a journal that can be kept inside  universities. And it also means that everyone 0:09:15.200,0:09:26.080 gets benefit from everyone's investment as these  journals are naturally open access and APC-free 0:09:27.440,0:09:36.720 This ecosystem is sustained by hundreds of  universities on the base which are publishing 0:09:36.720,0:09:48.320 journals and which are aided by different platforms, such as SciELO, La Referencia, Latindex, Redalyc, CLACSO 0:09:48.320,0:09:55.680 which are non-profit platforms of visibility and  provide added value services of additional quality 0:09:55.680,0:10:04.320 assurance, metrics, where key factors are there  to cooperate, to develop in-house software, and 0:10:06.240,0:10:17.440 we are in the middle of a distribution of  different investments. So who sustains the 0:10:17.440,0:10:24.240 non-profit publishing in Latin America. Well mainly  the academic sector, the academic associations, 0:10:24.240,0:10:32.720 universities, government organizations and the  health sector. All of them in a non-profit or 0:10:32.720,0:10:41.840 not-for-profit basis which involves public  or private money. In this sense Redalyc 0:10:43.760,0:10:53.840 has learned from these Latin American modus  operandi on open access and focus its efforts on 0:10:54.640,0:11:01.680 strengthening this approach which is academia-owned,  immediate open access, not for profit, non-APC 0:11:01.680,0:11:08.160 and technological leveraged. Redalyc is  an infrastructure that supports academia-owned 0:11:08.160,0:11:15.120 non-profit scholary publishing by providing  technology and sharing knowledge to contribute 0:11:15.120,0:11:20.960 to the sustainability of non-commercial open  access. In the sense Redalyc offers 0:11:21.920,0:11:32.320 different services that act as added value  functionalities to the journals 0:11:32.320,0:11:40.400 that are published in universities. And  these services are in terms of visability, metrics 0:11:41.600,0:11:49.840 quality. Today we index more than 1000 scientific journals from 31 countries 0:11:51.200,0:11:59.680 published by more than 600 universities. With  almost one million full text articles in our 0:11:59.680,0:12:07.840 platform. So this is a big community of journals  that are working on this approach in Latin America 0:12:07.840,0:12:16.000 This is the architecture. We provide  services in terms of quality assurance, in terms 0:12:16.000,0:12:21.760 of technology for efficiency and sustainability  of processes, and this is a very interesting 0:12:23.120,0:12:30.320 suite of tools that we are providing in order  to improve the workflow of journal production 0:12:31.120,0:12:37.840 And we provide services of interoperability,  information retrieval and visibility 0:12:38.400,0:12:47.920 And we also have this set of metrics that are  intended not to replace impact factor metrics but 0:12:47.920,0:12:59.440 to show how is the structure of the tissue  inherent in knowledge and to provide a different 0:13:01.440,0:13:09.680 point of view of the collaboration, internationalization and usage of content 0:13:09.680,0:13:19.280 on the web. We also provide services on  linked open data as we are looking 0:13:19.280,0:13:28.960 for organic visibility to have information to be connected in a wider 0:13:28.960,0:13:36.400 knowledge cloud. So we offer services on  linked open data which are based on semantic 0:13:36.960,0:13:45.680 technologies, ontologies, knowledge  representation. etc. Some of our tools 0:13:45.680,0:13:56.240 that are developed within our teams helps or  contributes to journals to improve and make 0:13:56.240,0:14:03.520 their processes more efficient and also to  track every element, it is based on XML data 0:14:04.320,0:14:14.320 to have the structure of a journal article with  every piece of information marked with a different 0:14:14.320,0:14:21.200 path, so it can be a process - for example an  equation or a table can be processed in 0:14:21.760,0:14:27.760 other different tools - so  this allows open data also to be 0:14:28.960,0:14:37.200 natural for journal publishing and it also  allows the generation of different file formats 0:14:37.200,0:14:45.200 in an automatic way. In this sense we can have an  interactive article reader, pdf, html, epub and a 0:14:45.200,0:14:55.600 mobile article reader. We can get all of  them with one click. So hundreds of journals are 0:14:55.600,0:15:04.800 producing their journals with these tools and  they have - of course - free of cost access to these 0:15:04.800,0:15:12.880 tools - as long as they meet the quality criteria to  be part of Redalyc. And they are working with this 0:15:12.880,0:15:25.120 workflow to lower their costs and to prevent the  adoption of APC or other commercial strategies 0:15:25.120,0:15:32.000 So in this sense Redaylc and AmeliCA believe that  we can achieve organic visablity, discoverability 0:15:32.000,0:15:38.560 and impact, where every single piece of information  could be part of a graph, to compose a structure 0:15:38.560,0:15:46.160 that expresses the inherent knowledge and to be  linked to a wider and unrestricted knowledge 0:15:46.160,0:15:52.480 cloud. In this sense we have some open questions  to Plan S, as I mentioned a little bit before 0:15:54.160,0:16:03.120 The first one is about the coexistence  of these two different models, how this 0:16:03.120,0:16:10.640 approach could coexist with a commercial one  if the big funding flow is directed unequally? 0:16:11.200,0:16:19.120 If one subsystem is altered to emulate other  new concepts, rules and values will appear with 0:16:19.120,0:16:26.080 side effects varying from weakening of the original  subsystem's strength to its complete disruption 0:16:26.080,0:16:32.080 and disappearance. And we are witnessing that, we  are seeing some journals that were non-commercial 0:16:33.040,0:16:40.160 that are starting to adopt APC, for example.  So this is something very worrying 0:16:41.120,0:16:46.960 One more question is what will be the motivations  for countries and institutions running 0:16:46.960,0:16:52.320 non-commercial open access publishing to keep  subsidising the publication of foreign research 0:16:53.040,0:16:58.400 while foreign founders are supporting  only APC based open access, which are 0:16:58.400,0:17:05.120 open access from commercial  corporations. And I have here some data 0:17:05.840,0:17:11.520 Around 13 percent of articles published in  Latin American journals come from non-Latin American 0:17:11.520,0:17:18.320 authors. So there's a big subsidy of our  governments and our universities in Latin America 0:17:20.800,0:17:27.520 publishing these journals, publishing articles  coming from non-Latin American authors, as well 0:17:28.480,0:17:36.720 and for European or an American  author to publish in our journals 0:17:39.120,0:17:47.440 it doesn't cost anything. So there's a  big subsidy, so we wonder why for example when 0:17:47.440,0:17:57.360 a European funder wants to support an open  access model why they are not thinking on this? 0:17:58.320,0:18:06.880 Perhaps the big question is why not to address the root problem? 0:18:07.520,0:18:13.760 Which is to take back control of publishing to the academic sector 0:18:13.760,0:18:19.600 Or contributing keeping it, in the case of Latin  America and to reduce the power of the publisher 0:18:19.600,0:18:28.560 oligopoly. So we have some lessons that we have  learned from Latin America that it is possible to 0:18:28.560,0:18:35.280 run journal publishing on a not-for-profit basis  in a cooperative approach - everyone gets benefit 0:18:35.280,0:18:42.080 from everyone's investment. A distribution  of goals among many stakeholders 0:18:42.080,0:18:47.760 And, well, journal publishing in the hands of  the academic sector promotes more inclusive 0:18:47.760,0:18:54.800 scholarly communications. AmeliCA and Redalyc  focus their efforts on preserving this approach 0:18:54.800,0:19:05.040 by developing technologies and by helping in the  professionalization of editorial teams, and provide 0:19:05.040,0:19:13.040 added value services to journals to preserve  this non-commercial approach of open access 0:19:13.040,0:19:22.720 Well, thank you very much, and I will be happy  to answer any questions on Twitter. Thank you