---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Japan's MEXT <jyogaku @ xxxxxxxxxx>Date: 2012/8/7
Subject: A report on open access and repositories from Japan's MEXT.
To:
JISC-REPOSITORIES @ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxDear 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
Cheif, University Library Unit
Office for Science Information Infrastructure
Information Division, Research Promotion Bureau
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
====================