Promoting research and innovation with open access

Abstract

We are now in an age when the development and sustainability of our society depend critically on research and innovation. At the same time, we are facing the rapid growth of digital knowledge, ubiquitous internet, and open innovation in diverse fields. Open access to scientific knowledge can take the full advantages of the digital and internet revolution, and ensure effective implementation of strategies of innovation-driven development. AsPremierLiKeqiang emphasized at the 2014AnnualMeeting of the Global Research Council held in Beijing on 27 May 2014, ‘Science is the driving force for development, and scientific knowledge should be available to all. Amore open platform will enable everyone to share scientific knowledge, and this will contribute to the inclusive development that benefits all’. China’s R&D thrives on knowledge obtained around the world. As China is advancing towards a top-tier position in the world’s research output, open access will improve the verifiability, reproducibility, and impact of research itself. It will also create a stronger base for effective research collaboration, especially in projects that aim to meet interdisciplinary, translational, and strategic challenges. More importantly, open access provides a new public knowledge base that enables generation of new knowledge through data mining, supporting innovative research on all fronts. With open access, knowledge is no longer confined within the library collections or databases accessible to the privileged few, thus becomingpowerful innovative instruments for all.This is especially true for China. According to theChinese Statistics Yearbook for Science and Technology 2013, there are more than 3600 R&D institutions, 47 000 R&D-active enterprises, and 200 high-tech industrial development zones. Adding to this, there are 610million internet users by the end of 2013. Imagine the possibilities when all internet users have easy access to and can play with all scientific knowledge over the network! Open access helps us to liberate knowledge from labs, journals, and libraries into anopen knowledge laboratory for all, tomobilize innovation capabilities, to enable big data-driven research, and to stimulate user-driven and market-oriented innovation, thus ensuring the greatest return on investment for publicly funded research. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been promoting open access to knowledge all the time. In May of 2014, CAS issued its open access policy, requiring allCAS researchers todeposit their peer-reviewed research articles resulting fromall public funding into their respective institutional repositories (IRs), and to provide public access within 12 months of publication. More than 100 CAS institutes now have their IRs, with more than 440 thousand full-text research papers deposited and 6.9 million downloads registered in 2013 alone, making the CAS IR system one of the largest in the world. This is further facilitated by the CAS support to authors publishing in open access journals. And, there are more than 170 open access journals published by CAS, among 600 such journals in China, according to Chinese Science and Technology Association. Chinese scientific communities are working together for open access. TheMinistry of Science and Technology (MoST) has launched its Scientific Reports Public Sharing Systemwhere MoST-funded projects are required to deposit their final reports with open access. Through its National Science and TechnologyLibrary system,MoSTalso supportsChina’s participation in the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, through which about half of the research papers in high energy physics are now open access immediately after publication. In May of 2014, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) also issued its open access policy requiring open access deposit of research articles resulting from its funding. This is just the beginning.More steps are required inChina to ensure effective, affordable, and sustainable open access. One is to develop operational means for enforceable implementation of the open access deposit requirements of CAS, NSFC, and the like. Another is to develop economical mechanisms for supporting open access publishingwhich is becoming amainstream in scholarly publishing. What is important here is to work with all stakeholders, to foster cooperation among government agencies, publishers, and scientific communities. Given the increasing pace of open access, we can envision an erawhenessentially all published research articles and a substantial portion of research data are open to all. We scientists need to prepare ourselves for this new era, and funding agencies and research institutions need to incorporate open access into their current management and future plan for knowledge infrastructure and research workflow. I trust that open access will lead to new approaches in research and innovation, and will open new horizons in science, technology, and social development.