Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2017 08:37:13 +0000
Having worked with and for NGOs for a number of years until last year, the range of publications and mission of NGOs is too broad to generalize, but in the main those that publish are aiming at policymakers and practitioners. They make their reports available freely because this serves their mission – you’d be lucky to find a NGO who classified doing this as ‘open access’ – it’s just core business. How do people find out about these reports? Launches, UN system meetings, local NGO networks, conferences, email lists and by putting the reports on the desk of policymakers. For those publications that are based on indicators, there is a deep field of literature in political science looking at the influence of certain types of publications like the Freedom House reports, which can influence government behaviour, despite not being in a repository or marketed. Reputation is key.
Some think tanks and NGOs do have partnerships with publishers for more traditional scholarly outputs, the Overseas Development Institute has a journal, for example. A prominent Oxfam-affiliated author released his latest book with OUP open access alongside traditional purchase options and it’s been enormously successful -
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-change-happens-9780198785392?cc=gb&lang=en&. But in the main, reports are based on up to date practice and experience.
Would it provide added benefit to make these reports more findable to a scholarly audience? Certainly, but being a librarian who has worked in the development field (and published several such reports myself), I think it’s important to be mindful to understand the priorities of NGOs, their resources, and efforts already ongoing. There are a number of initiatives seeking to strengthen links between NGO research and practice, and decision-making (“evidence informed policymaking”) that organisations like INASP and ODI have been leading amongst many others <
https://www.odi.org/our-work/programmes/research-and-policy-development> of which strategies to support access would be a component. I’ve also been in discussions with UN consultants in the recent past who are concerned with these issues.
To Toby’s point, I’d be interested in discussing initiatives that are in development and where there’d be opportunities for libraries to provide advice to the field on this.
Kind regards,
Fiona
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On 25/7/17, 3:15 am, "LibLicense-L Discussion Forum on behalf of LIBLICENSE" <
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From: Joseph Esposito <
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Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2017 23:24:33 -0400
In media industries in general, including publishing and including
scholarly publishing as well, marketing is typically half of all
expenditures in one form or another. Putting metadata into a discovery
service is a good thing, but it is not a very big thing.
More people would know about the Oxfam publications (which, BTW, I had
never heard of until I saw this post, and I read about scholarly
communications all day long) if they had a price on them and were
actively marketed. Open access is not an innovation; it is a
capitulation. If the products were worthy of grasping even a small
amount of the attention of the potential readership, a paywall is no
barrier at all. Many things become open access (this is particularly
true of monographs) because there is no end-user demand for them. And
so I ask the obvious question: If these publications are so good, why
won't anyone pay for them?
I would love to put together a marketing plan for the Oxfam
publications. They would not be open, but more people would know about
them and read them. Marketing is everything in media.
Joe Esposito