Acceso abierto a la ciencia (Open Access to Science)
Active Spanish open access advocacy group
What is it?
Acceso abierto a la ciencia (Open Access to Science) is a very active Spanish open access working group composed of staff from the University of Barcelona, the University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council.
The group has a portal which it uses to disseminate its work, from publications to a database of Spanish repositories. It is aimed mainly at authors (who are seeking information on rights and conditions to self-archive their publications), librarians (who need data on the rights of existing repositories and journals), university scientists and managers (who need know what the policies are being carried out in this area) and those interested in open access in general.
Acceso abierto a la ciencia has developed tools. These include a directory of Spanish scientific journals providing information about publishers’ copyright terms and self-archiving policies (Dulcinea), an updated directory of Spanish institutional open access repositories (BuscaRepositorios) and an international directory of institutional open access policies (Melibea). The aim of Melibea is to identify and analyse the existing policies that encourage, request or require open access to scholarly outputs that arise from projects supported by public funds.
In addition, the group runs a popular list, OS-repositorios, and organises conferences.
How is it a success?
Reme Melero, one of the founders of the group
The OS-repositorios list was created in 2006 after a meeting, held in Madrid, of people involved in open access initiatives. It is an active forum composed of librarians, computing staff, editors, university publishers, repository managers, professors and researchers.
“It was one of the first forums in Spain about not only this kind of repository but also any kind of issues relating to open access,” says Reme Melero, director of the European Association of Science Editors, and one of Acceso abierto a la ciencia’s founding members.
The list has gone from strength to strength, starting with just 40 members and now having around 300. It has serves to share experiences of different aspects of open access projects as well as promoting collaboration among groups that has produced coordinated national and international projects.
One of the main activities of the group and the forum has been annual (now bi-annual) workshops which are free to attend and cover a wide variety of open access issues.
“We always invite several specialists in different fields and they are happy to be there and learn about our situation,” explains Melero. “Some of them have not been aware that in Spain there are initiatives in favour of open access so this kind of international exchange through the workshops also helps to promote Spanish open access activity.”
[Waiting for further example and quote about the success of a) the workshops and b) the wider group here]
Further information
View the programme of the 2010 conference in Barcelona
Author, Group/network, Libraries, Nation, Self-archiving, Spain