MyOpenArchive, an individual rather than an institutional Open Access Repository, and initial responses

Keita BANDO
Digital Repository Librarian and Coordinator for Scholarly Communication, MyOpenArchive

Abstract
Open Access Week [1] indicated the potential of the Open Access Movement by reaching a large number of current users of Open Access Journals and Institutional Repositories (IRs). [2] The main focus of this study is to highlight the importance of self-archiving as a form of iR for individuals as opposed to IR for institutions. Thus, we focus on MyOpenArchive, [3] which has been developed through the efforts of several individuals. MyOpenArchive is an Open Access Repository for researchers who need to undertake self-archiving. Within the first 3 years of its launch, MyOpenArchive has attracted 393 users and received 210 posts from individuals. First, we should note that different types of research have been archived using MyOpenArchive. Of the total number of posts, 95% are private studies (so-called gray literature). Moreover, 83% of the posts are licensed under a Creative Commons License. [4] Users of MyOpenArchive thus seem to understand the usefulness of digital rights management. On the basis of these facts, we can safely assume that iR can meet the demands of a large number of users who need open resources and licenses. Figure 1: Screenshot of MyOpenArchive

Introduction
MyOpenArchive was created by a university staff member who wished to set up an iR for himself, because his institution did not have an IR at that time. (See Fig. 1 for a screenshot.) The service was developed through the efforts of Japanese individuals who had no professional knowledge of IR inventory. Officially, 1,851 IRs have been launched around the world. Japan has 129 (7%) of the worlds IRs, which makes its academic repository the fourth largest in the world, after those of the US (383/2%), UK (18/1%), and Germany (142/8%). [5] Japan has 125 university IRs, [6] which means that only 16% of Japanese universities (773) have their own IRs. [7] Given that 84% of Japanese universities do not have their own IRs, we can conclude that 144,000 researchers at Japanese institutions require access to the green roadnamely, self-archiving. Therefore, we founded MyOpenArchive in September 2007. We mainly drew on the principles of Open Access Repositories for individuals, especially researchers who lack the assistance of institutions or library staff. Among the literature available on the web, we advocate the use of open access especially for gray literature, a term that has recently started to receive general acceptance for referring to academic resources without repositories. Gray literature can comprise technical reports, conference papers, and theses, and can be defined as documents that are difficult to access because they have not received large-scale publication or circulation. (Fig. 3) Because such documents tend to be stored in personal collections from which they cannot be easily retrieved, we have paid special attention to the use of open access for archiving gray literature through voluntary efforts, attendance at seminars, [8] and organization of conferences [9] for researchers. Figure 3: Types of gray literature

Initial Results
Within the first 3 years of its launch, MyOpenArchive has attracted 393 users and received 210 posts from individuals. Of the total number of posts on MyOpenArchive, 95% consist of gray literature. On the basis of the initial results, we can safely claim that the project has been a success. Through this project, we have acquired a vast variety of research, including some gray literature, such as faculty papers and final drafts. We also believe that we have been successful because a few of the studies in MyOpenArchive have been cited, for instance, by some theses. Finally, as shown in Fig. 4, 83% of the users posted their work under a Creative Commons License. Moreover, 50% of the posts are under a Creative Commons BY-NC License. [10] Users of MyOpenArchive therefore understand the usefulness of digital rights management. These results reveal the increasing public awareness of the importance of a medium for sharing academic studies. Figure 4: Types of posts on MyOpenArchive

Conclusions
As mentioned above, we advocate MyOpenArchive as an iR for researchers with or without an IR. We promote MyOpenArchive because it has successfully fulfilled the needs of researchers not only in Japan but also around the world. Its infrastructure and user experience can enhance and expand the global academic community. Driven by our belief in the usefulness of MyOpenArchive, we launched an English version in November 2011. [11] Twitter, Facebook, and other social media API have been utilized to advertise it, as these social media are popular among researchers around the world. [12] Such advertising has basically been carried out by volunteers because it is both cost- and time effective. We hope that this new method of self-archiving revolutionizes scholarly communication, although other initiatives are also necessary.

References
[1] Open Access Week http://openaccessweek.org/ [2] The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics: 2010 Dramatic Growth of Open Access http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-dramaticgrowth-of-open-access.html [3] MyOpenArchive http://season1.myopenarchive.org/toppage [4] About the Licenses - Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ [5] OpenDOAR Chart - Proportion of Repositories by Country Worldwide http://goo.gl/Sghcb [6] NII Institutional Repositories Program | Current IRs http://www.nii.ac.jp/irp/en/list/ [7] Preliminary Report on School Basic Survey Summary of Results for FY2009: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (PDF: 94KB) http://www.mext.go.jp/component/b_menu/other/__icsFiles/afieldfile/ 2009/08/06/1282571_1.pdf [8] Asia: Open Access Day 2008 OAD http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Asia:_Open_Access_Day_2008#N ational_Institute_of_Informatics.2C_Japan [9] Asia: Open Access Week 2009 OAD http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Asia:_Open_Access_Week_2009# Open_Access_.E2.80.9CFriday_.26_Night.E2.80.9D_2009 [10] Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial 3.0 UnportedCC BY-NC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0/ [11] MyOpenArchive Launched New Digital Repository for Open Access | MyOpenArchive Blog http://blog.myopenarchive.org/2011/01/23/myopenarchivelaunched-new-digital-repository-for-open-access/ [12] Social Media: A Guide for Researchers | Research Information Network http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-anddisseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers

copyright copyright

Journal Article other other Preprint

Figure 2: Screenshot of the new MyOpenArchive

Thesis or Dissertation

Conference Paper Research Paper Other

Presentation Technical Report

Acknowledgments
Editage (www.editage.com), a division of Cactus Communications, provided partial financial support.

Open Repository 2011/Poster Session/This poster is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.