Open Access Will Strengthen Design Research

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Introducing open access in Danish research will benefit design research both academically and economically, not least because design research is a multi-disciplinary research field, says Troels Degn Johansson, head of research at The Danish Design School. Indeed, there are indications that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation will soon introduce open access as a requirement of government-funded research.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

Subscriptions to traditional, paper-based research journals are costly. Making research articles freely available online is both an academic and an economic benefit for institutions of research and education, especially the smaller ones. Head of research at the Danish Design School, Associate Professor Troels Degn Johansson, looks forward to the introduction of open access in Denmark.
“When one has had an article accepted by an international journal with peer review, it’s a shame that one’s colleagues and students can’t access it, simply because budget restraints prevent the school from subscribing to the journal in question,” says Troels Degn Johansson.

Troels Degn Johansson, head of research at The Danish Design School, thinks open access will strengthen design research in Denmark. Photo: Henrik Petit

Barriers to Knowledge Sharing

He points out that new journals are constantly launched that may offer relevant channels of communication for design researchers.
“That poses a structural problem, which means that the results of our work are not disseminated freely to the research environment. In particular, we keep seeing more and more specialised journals that focus on posters, arts and crafts or other topics,” he says. “Open access would allow a much wider audience to benefit from the knowledge that is generated, and research would be able to reach a higher level.”

Interdisciplinary Knowledge Exchange

The large number of journals is partly the result of the interdisciplinary nature of design research. Design research brings many sub-disciplines together from the main fields of study that have defined the faculty structure since the emergence of the university system such as the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. Troels Degn Johansson says,
“With design research we are building a multi-disciplinary field of research. Our methods are characterised by an inclination to apply a holistic perspective rather than relying on any one particular discipline. Rather than adopting certain approaches uncritically, design researchers reflect on their standpoint and draw on theories that are rooted in different research disciplines. Here, open access is great, because the free, electronic access to research findings makes it possible to discover knowledge across traditional disciplinary boundaries. With paper-based journals that only cover content within a narrowly defined research field, researchers typically only discover the knowledge of other researchers within their own field.”

Open Access as a Requirement in Denmark

The strengthening of research through the free dissemination of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries is included in the EU Council’s conclusions on open access, which encourage the members countries to “maximise access for researchers and students to scientific publications” and to “ensure the long-term preservation of scientific information”. In Denmark, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation established an Open Access Committee in 2009, which published a report on 3 May with recommendations for the implementation of open access.

Bo Öhrström expects Danish universities to embrace open access gradually over the coming years. Photographer: Bjarke Ørsted

The Green Model

In the report, which is being circulated for comment until 9 July 2010, the committee recommends that the Danish research institutions use the so-called green model for implementing open access. Under this model, as soon as possible after the publication of a research article, each institution should make the best possible version of the article available free of charge in the institution’s electronic archive; for the schools of design and architecture, that archive would be RE-AD.
Bo Öhrström, deputy director in the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media and the chairman of the committee, explains,
“Of course, one should adhere to the publisher’s regulations. Some publishers don’t permit open access until six months after the publication date, and some won’t allow free access to the layout version that the publisher has developed for publication. Nevertheless, I see the green model as an obvious possibility for the research environments. Most institutions already have this sort of archive, and it’ll only take a modest expense to maintain it and place the publications online.”
Another possibility, which the Open Access Committee is not pointing to as its primary recommendation, is the golden model, which requires the researcher – or, in practice, the researcher’s workplace – to pay the publisher to publish the article, typically at a rate of USD 2,000 to 3,000 per article.

Data Storage – a Question of Resources

The Open Access Committee has also addressed the issue of long-term storage of scientific information. In the current situation – before any implementation of open access – there is no comprehensive worldwide solution for preserving research findings. Thus, it is up to the publishers to store and secure their publications on an ongoing basis. In Denmark, the legal deposit law requires all published works and material that is published online to be deposited with The Royal Library and with the State and University Library. These libraries are charged with storing both paper-based and electronic materials published in Denmark. However, new hardware and new operating systems and file formats regularly replace existing ones. Therefore, the committee recommends that The Royal Library be charged with establishing and maintaining a system that harvests all data and secures its future readability.
“This solution requires manpower for moving all the data to new operating systems and new hardware, but that’s simply a matter of resources. In fact, The Royal Library already has a pilot version of this system,” says Bo Öhrström. “Similar arrangements would need to be established on an international level.”

Today, the legal deposit law requires The Royal Library to store all published works as well as material that is published online. The Open Access Committee under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation recommends additionally charging The Royal Library with establishing and maintaining a system to store all data and ensure their future readability. A pilot version of such a system is already in operation at The Royal Library. Photo: The Royal Library

No Revolution

Bo Öhrström expects that Danish universities will embrace open access gradually over the coming years.
“I believe in evolution rather than revolution. The Technical University of Denmark and the Copenhagen Business School are already off to a good start, and when the board for Culture and Communication under the Free Research Council supports research projects, they require open access no later than six months after an article has been published,” he says.

Speed of Dialogue

The committee does not address the issue of ensuring research quality as the existing peer review system is assumed to continue unaffected by the introduction of open access. However, Troels Degn Johansson emphasises the potential for open access to add a certain speed to the dialogue among researchers and thus make it an important supplement to the peer review publications.
“By sharing one’s ideas in the form of working papers, one can contribute to a debate that is topical here and now while also referring to a scientific discourse that is documented in ‘proper’ research articles,” he emphasises. “That may offer lower quality and lower recognition than peer-reviewed articles, but relevance and currency are also important factors. And sometimes we see that the articles are modified on their way through the peer review process in a way that eliminates interesting sideline debates and unconventional ideas that might benefit from exposure to the academic debate forum.”