Grants/Implementing a web site that will provide technical and legal support for Latin-American publishers of academic journals to satisfy open journal standards.
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
The proposal is to design, develop and implement a web site that will provide technical and legal support for Latin-American publishers of academic journals to satisfy open journal standards. The site will provide legal support according to the Chilean and Colombian regulation, but it will be adaptable for other jurisdictions. Contents will be available in Spanish, and it will include proposal of condition of submission (by contributors), best practices of open journals, legal guidelines for academic publishers, technical recommendations, and a section with frequent questions, among others.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
A web site that will include: a legal guidelines for academic publishers; a guideline of technical best practices for open journals; some recommendations of clauses of submission (for contributors); and a compilation of standard for indexation and repositories of academic journals.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The direct targets of the initiative are the publishers of academic journals, which will receive technical support to adopt open journal standards. In Chile and Colombia, this community currently is conformed for around 400 editors/publishers, according to information collected from main repositories of Latin-American academic journals (Latindex, Scielo, and RedALyC). However, the indirect target is conformed by faculty members, scholars and students of Spanish speaker countries, which could enjoy more academic journals available in an open journal model.br />
NGO Derechos Digitales already has provided legal support to Chilean publishers, librarians, and blogers, among other civil society organizations. In addition, in 2008, NGO Derechos Digitales conducted a research about open standards among Chilean academic journals. Finally, during 2010, NGO Derechos Digitales (Chile) and Fundación Karisma (Colombia) conduct together an initiative financed by Frida-IDRC about Latin-American journals, which include the elaboration of guidelines and best practices for open journals. The initiative now we submit to Creative Commons will allow to upload those contents and make them available online, by designing, developing, and implementing an appropriate website.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
Currently, according preliminary data, around 35% of journals in Chile and Colombia satisfy open journal standards. We expect to provide support to at least 100 publishers face-to-face (in the context of RedALyC and Scielo workshops, which are programmed for November 2010 and 2011), and provide them technical and legal support through the website. In addition, we expect that by 2011 at least 50% of journals have adopted an open journal model, in those countries that are involved in the initiative. In sum, there will be two measures of impact: 100 publishers capacitated in open journal model, and an increase to 50% of Chilean and Colombian journals under open journal model.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
The main challenge of the project is to get access to the participants, publishers of academic journals. However, it will be facilitated by institutional arrangements with: the National Commission on Science and Technology of Chile, which provides financial support to 60 Chilean academic journals; the Scielo initiative, which is organizing his meeting 2010 in Valdivia-Chile, including a workshop about open journal standards developed by NGO Derechos Digitales; and, the RedALyC initiative, which is having his next meeting in Santiago-Chile in 2011. Scielo and RedALyC are the main repositories of Latin-American academic journals, and each of them includes more than 600 journals.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
The initiative will provide technical and legal support to academic journal in order to adopt open journals criteria. The open standard criteria require the use of Creative Commons and/or similar licenses, which allow at least a free non-commercial use of the content by end-users (readers). Therefore, the initiative will benefit Creative Commons by increasing the number of journals that use the CC licenses. In addition, the guidelines, compilation of best practices and other contents developed for the website will be available under CC, which will allow its customization by other jurisdictions, particularly other Latin-American jurisdictions.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
Both NGO Derechos Digitales (Chile) and Fundación Karisma (Colombia) already have legal staff that will be involved in the initiative. Also, a journalist and a librarian have been hired to collect best practices and technical contents. They will provide content for the website. However, neither NGO Derechos Digitales nor Fundación Karisma have professionals with experiences in designing, developing, and implementing websites. Therefore, this project submitted to Creative Commons will provide the sources necessaries to hire the needed professionals.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The main challenge is access to face-to-face contacts with publishers of academic journals. To overcome this challenge, we will make institutional arrangements not just with one institution, but with three of them. In fact, already we have an agreement with the Chilean National Commission in Science and Technology, which provide financial support to 60 journals in Chile. In addition, we will agree with the two repositories of Latin-American journals (Scielo and RedALyC), each of them includes more than 600 journals. They both are organizing their next regional meetings in Chile, in 2010 and 2011.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
The project is a non-for-profit initiative, which does not intend getting any revenue. However, to provide sustainability for the initiative both NGO Derechos Digitales (Chile) and Fundación Karisma (Colombia) will upgrade and update contents periodically, at least during the next two years following to the execution of the initiative. Also, we will intend to transfer the content and know-how to the main institutions that currently work with publishers of academic journals (CONICYT, Scielo, and/or RedALyC).
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
The project will intend to be scalable in terms of susceptible to be replicated by other Latin-American jurisdictions. This is particularly true for the case of the technical support. Instead, in the case of the legal support, it could be necessary to customize the contents according the domestic copyright law of the respective jurisdiction. However, given the significant harmonization of copyright laws across Latin America, customizing legal contents shouldn’t be a critical issue for other jurisdictions, particularly those that have implemented the Creative Commons licenses, because they have a supporting team, including a legal leader who is expert in copyright.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
The sources we expect from Creative Commons will allow hiring two professionals who will design, develop and implement the web site with technical and legal support for Latin-American publishers of academic journals to satisfy open journal standards. However, contents of this website will be provided by professionals and staff already working on it. Unfortunately, sources for developing the website do not exist in the Chilean and Colombian institutions that joint this initiative.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Both NGO Derechos Digitales and Fundación Karisma use a broad ways to communicate with its community members, including technological media (an institutional website and some initiative-websites, and mailing lists). Also, both develop periodical workshops and participate in several conferences through the year in their countries and overseas. In the case of NGO Derechos Digitales, it has a monthly one-hour-radio-show about free culture, copyright and human rights on digital environment, which also is available online.
Legal
Yes
