The first ever Conference on Open Access and Scholarly Publishing in Asia (COASP Asia) will begin June 2, 2014. Discussions will focus on open access publishing as a global industry with a key focus on Asia as an emerging market. The conference aims to provide a forum in which speakers and delegates can share their thoughts and best practices from all aspects of the field including OA policies, advocacy and the development of OA journals in Asia.
COASP started in 2009. All of the meetings so far have been held in Europe and delegates have been from professional publishing organisations, independent publishers and university presses, as well as librarians, university administrators and other stakeholders. According to Bev Acreman, Vice President, BioMed Central and Springer, the decision to host an event in Asia represents the growth in OA across this region in recent years.
Research output in Asia is growing fast. According to the National Science Foundation indicators published in February this year, the number of articles published by researchers in Asian countries increased from 89,000 in 1997 to 212,000 in 2011.
If this trend continues, Asia, with China in the vanguard, is likely to overtake both the US and European Union in terms of research output in the very near future. A Royal Society report from 2011 predicted that China would overtake the US sometime around this time.
Given this trend, there has been an increase in the number of researchers from Asia choosing to publish their research open access. According to Joyce Li, BioMed Central's Journal Development Manager based in Beijing, open access is growing in China. A lot of interest in partnerships to start new OA journals has also been witnessed.
However, there are still a lot of questions around open access and plenty to do if the model is to become as established as it is in the US and Europe, says Joyce. She further noted that mandates for open access from governments are not common. People are also often unclear about the licensing and what it means for the research community. There is a lack of awareness about predatory publishers, so more information and support is needed.
China is not the only Asian country where an increase in researchers publishing open access has been observed.
Natsu Ishii, from Springer, who is based in Tokyo, says that more and more authors are now publishing in OA journals in Japan. It seems that the number of Open Choice take-ups from Japanese authors is relatively large despite there being no open access mandate or policies in place.
