Open Access

Open Access Policy of PANGAEA

The Internet has become an essential piece of the global scientific enterprise as a medium for communication, information and publication. At the same time, the amount of data related to earth system research increases exponentialy. In most cases, it is not possible to print related primary data in tabels due to limited space, page charges of just the amount of data. Most of the publishers now provide repositories for supplementary material, but especially such archiving of data encounters various problems:

1. Access to supplements is linked to the users access constraints to the full text of a (commercial) journal; if a publication is not in OA also the data are NOT in OA.

1. The publishers do not have any rules for the description of the data (metadata); the reviewers mostly do not care.
2. The technical file format is rarely machine-readable ASCII; can be anything like xls, doc, proprietary binary code, pdf or even worth password-protected pdf.
3. The scientific format is individual; abbreviations might not be explained, neither in the table, nor in the text; units are missing; format does not follow international standards.
4. Space is limited

To meet this challenge on a global scale activities are underway to provide Open Access to a larger share of scientific data. The OECD and in consequence funding organizations and research institutions strongly encourage the scientists to deposit their scientific primary (factual) data in repositories. As stated in a declaration of ASTM all their member publishers strongly support that authors archive data related to published articles in OA repositories.

Archiving of data helps authors as well as publishers: articles with an additional online version of the data are cited more often, which enhances visibility and impact of your scientific works’ results. Additionally, higher citation rates improve a journal’s impact factor – a fact highly appreciated by commercial publishers as well. At the same time, the scientific output receives more recognition by being displayed on an international network of data centers and libraries.

All scientific publishers accept this way of displaying data related to their journals on public servers accessible at no cost to participants. Data centers and libraries have begun depositing data on local institutional repositories in standard formats and distributing the citations through library catalogs. Global databases such as OAIster index documents that have been archived in OAI-interface-equipped (Open Archives Initiative) repositories similar to the PANGAEA server. Portals like Google Scholar, ScientificCommons or commercial services like Web of Science or Scopus have started to index data supplements that have been deposited on trusted repositories such as PANGAEA.

In 2002, the large research-funding organisations signed the ‘Berlin Declaration’, manifesting their support of the Open Access principle. They have also indicated that publication fees can be requested in proposals for research funding. If you have plans to initiate any new publishing activities you are welcome to use the PANGAEA infrastructure, operated and maintained by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute and the University of Bremen.

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Since 2009-12 Pangaea is an official Open Access data repository for supplements related to Elsevier journals. The data link in Science Direct appears on the splash page of a paper for users with guest account.

• see Publishing News at

http://www.elsevier.com/authored_subject_sections/L01/L01_402/misc/aquatic_dec2009_web.html

• example at doi:10.1016/j.marmicro.2007.09.002

Open Access to journals

Pangaea supports the Open Access of journals by digitization, OCR and availability vie Intern:ePIC using handles or inclusion in the library catalog of TIB using DOI.

• Reports on Polar and Marine Research
• Polarforschung
• Geowissenschaften (Alfred Wegener Stiftung)
• Meyniana
• Berichte - Reports, GeoIogisch-Paläontologisches Institut, Universität Kiel 1983-1998, 82 Hefte
• Berichte - Reports, Institut für Geowissenschaften, Universität Kiel, 1999-2004, 20 Hefte
• Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Meeresforschung in Bremerhaven
• cruise reports of METEOR, SONNE and MARIA S MERIAN

Open ... definitions

• Open Source: Probably the best-known "open" term, the practice of making computer source code freely available to use and modify. In a model emulated by open-science practitioners, open-source development has facilitated huge collaborative projects, yielding products such as the operating system Linux.
• Open Access: In scholarly publishing (including peer-reviewed scientific journals), the practice of making all journal articles available free.
• Open Data: The practice of making data freely available, without restrictions such as copyright.
• Open Science: An umbrella term sometimes used to unite the concepts of Open Notebook Science, Open Data, Open Access, and sometimes Open Source.
• Open Notebook Science: At its most pure, the practice of putting the entire record of a research project -- lab notebooks, raw data, drafts of proposals and papers -- online in real time. Moderated versions of open-notebook science may involve some time delays or restrictions on releasing some types of materials, such as proposal drafts.