*Hooman Momen is scientific editor of the magazine Memórias of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz; and Paulo Guanaes acts as executive editor of the magazine Trabalho, Educação e Saúde
By establishing its Open Access to Knowledge Policy in March 2014, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) sought to guarantee society free consultation of its scientific production, aligning itself with the global open access movement. Beginning in the late 1980s, this movement was a reaction to the so-called “journals crisis”. The constant increases in subscription prices for scientific journals practiced by commercial publishers made the acquisition of collections by university libraries and teaching and research institutions unfeasible. As they see themselves compelled to buy from these publishers, as they hold control of the only vehicle accepted by the world scientific community for publishing texts, a peculiar business is configured in which a private entity appropriates an asset (the scientific article), adds some value to it and charges exorbitant prices for its use. Most of these texts originate from publicly funded research. Open access breaks this logic, aided by information and communication technologies and the internet, which provide low-cost publishing models with wide circulation.
Open access policies have been generating tension in the scientific publications sector. It is a concentrated market, in which only three publishing groups – Reed Elsevier, Springer and Wiley – hold more than 40% of published scientific journals. Until recently, they had little interest in scientific publishing in Brazil. This attitude has changed and most have already opened an office in our country or bought a national publishing house. One of the obstacles to this expansion of international commercial publishers in the Brazilian publishing market is SciELO, an innovative portal for Brazilian scientific journals, a pioneer in the use of open access in Brazil and one of those responsible for increasing the visibility of our scientific production at national and international level. . Recently, an American academic librarian, sympathetic to commercial publishers and a fierce critic of the open access movement, published an article comparing SciELO to a “publishing slum” and commercial publishers to “nice neighborhoods”. His disrespect for scientific publication in Latin America was repudiated by SciELO and the scientific community with responses that sounded like a renewal of widespread support for open access in that region.
With regard to the Fiocruz, in order to implement its open access policy, in 2014 it perfected the Arca digital repository, created to disseminate and preserve its intellectual production. It currently has 4.698 scientific articles, 2.224 master's dissertations and 867 doctoral theses. In 2015, F.iocruz launched its Portal de Periódicos, bringing together the seven scientific journals it edits: Cadernos de Saúde Pública; Memories of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute; History, Science, Health – Manguinhos; Work, Education and Health; Electronic Journal of Communication, Information & Innovation in Health; Health Surveillance in Debate; and Fitos Magazine. In two digital spaces, the reader has free access to a significant portion of scientific literature in the area of public health produced in Brazil and abroad.
Today, the engagement of the scientific community and governments, which enact laws in favor of open access, occurs all over the world. In Brazil, initiatives such as Fiocruz and SciELO need the support of public research funding agencies, creating policies for the open access publication of articles from research financed with their resources.
*The article was published in the 16/09/2015 edition of the newspaper 'O Globo'
*Hooman Momen is scientific editor of the magazine Memórias of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz; and Paulo Guanaes acts as executive editor of the magazine Trabalho, Educação e Saúde
By establishing its Open Access to Knowledge Policy in March 2014, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) sought to guarantee society free consultation of its scientific production, aligning itself with the global open access movement. Beginning in the late 1980s, this movement was a reaction to the so-called “journals crisis”. The constant increases in subscription prices for scientific journals practiced by commercial publishers made the acquisition of collections by university libraries and teaching and research institutions unfeasible. As they see themselves compelled to buy from these publishers, as they hold control of the only vehicle accepted by the world scientific community for publishing texts, a peculiar business is configured in which a private entity appropriates an asset (the scientific article), adds some value to it and charges exorbitant prices for its use. Most of these texts originate from publicly funded research. Open access breaks this logic, aided by information and communication technologies and the internet, which provide low-cost publishing models with wide circulation.
Open access policies have been generating tension in the scientific publications sector. It is a concentrated market, in which only three publishing groups – Reed Elsevier, Springer and Wiley – hold more than 40% of published scientific journals. Until recently, they had little interest in scientific publishing in Brazil. This attitude has changed and most have already opened an office in our country or bought a national publishing house. One of the obstacles to this expansion of international commercial publishers in the Brazilian publishing market is SciELO, an innovative portal for Brazilian scientific journals, a pioneer in the use of open access in Brazil and one of those responsible for increasing the visibility of our scientific production at national and international level. . Recently, an American academic librarian, sympathetic to commercial publishers and a fierce critic of the open access movement, published an article comparing SciELO to a “publishing slum” and commercial publishers to “nice neighborhoods”. His disrespect for scientific publication in Latin America was repudiated by SciELO and the scientific community with responses that sounded like a renewal of widespread support for open access in that region.
With regard to the Fiocruz, in order to implement its open access policy, in 2014 it perfected the Arca digital repository, created to disseminate and preserve its intellectual production. It currently has 4.698 scientific articles, 2.224 master's dissertations and 867 doctoral theses. In 2015, F.iocruz launched its Portal de Periódicos, bringing together the seven scientific journals it edits: Cadernos de Saúde Pública; Memories of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute; History, Science, Health – Manguinhos; Work, Education and Health; Electronic Journal of Communication, Information & Innovation in Health; Health Surveillance in Debate; and Fitos Magazine. In two digital spaces, the reader has free access to a significant portion of scientific literature in the area of public health produced in Brazil and abroad.
Today, the engagement of the scientific community and governments, which enact laws in favor of open access, occurs all over the world. In Brazil, initiatives such as Fiocruz and SciELO need the support of public research funding agencies, creating policies for the open access publication of articles from research financed with their resources.
*The article was published in the 16/09/2015 edition of the newspaper 'O Globo'
The non-profit reproduction of the text is allowed as long as the source is cited (Comunicação / Instituto Oswaldo Cruz)
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