3.0 Environmental Scan

Publishing models are evolving
This is a time of experimentation in terms of finding a sustainable publishing model that will be widely adopted by funding agencies, authors, and publishing service providers. Given the trends toward Open Access, electronic-only and declining subscriptions, the key question is who will fund the editing, layout and coordination of peer review of the digital "first copy" of the article or journal. The publishers who are enabling open access are attempting to collect revenues from authors (i.e., from a portion of their research funding), from libraries (asking them to redirect journal subscription payments to journal publishing) and other organizations who traditionally did not have to pay for publishing. Alternative business models will impact publishers' product and service strategies. CISTI must be aware of and respond to trends regarding Open Access and will need to develop a new funding model for its publishing activities that will take these trends into account.

The research article is evolving in the digital age
Changing researcher behaviour has resulted in a new research process that now combines discovery services and full text, and is focused on the article. Mega-search engines, such as Google, have indexed the vast majority of scientific journals and now offer virtual instant access. This has helped to level the playing field between large and small STM publishers. More value is being placed not only on the article itself, but also on its disaggregated components (i.e., abstract, tables, linked citations, data).

Information is becoming "actionable" and capable of better supporting the cycle of research/writing/research by incorporating citation management, reference analysis tools, and visualization tools into their content products.^[1]

Institutional repositories enable Open Access
Institutional repositories are being formed to facilitate open access to outputs of research. Similarly, CISTI has received funding to create an institutional repository for digital publications and data generated by NRC researchers. This project, entitled NRC Publications Archives (NPArC), will be the first federal government department or agency institutional repository, other than that of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), that is compliant with the Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. NRC research publications will be searchable and accessible free to all Canadians. As well, CISTI has a project underway to develop a Trusted Digital Repository for long term storage of digital content.

Connect Canadians to STM information
Canada must meet the challenge of developing a world-class networked infrastructure to support its scientific and health communities. Access to timely, accurate information is essential to economic development and innovation, yet there are many knowledge workers who, through lack of affiliation with an academic library or health network, or who work for an organization with limited resources to purchase information, do not have the ability to connect to the high quality information and evidence-based research they need.

"Canada may once have been a world leader in Internet access, yet today it finds itself years behind other countries in developing a clearly focused strategy to link digital access with digital information. digital information and networked technologies are key drivers of economic growth and social well-being in the 21st century. It is clear that the nations that nurture their digital information assets and infrastructure will prosper; those that do not will fall behind."^[2]

Opportunities to support access to health information

Canada's research and health information electronic infrastructure has been funded through separate federal, provincial, regional, and sector (e.g. academic or health) initiatives. As a result, there are many separate networks or "island" web-based information resources accessible by particular sector communities, but an unknown number of Canadian health practitioners have no access to these information resources. In the digital age, connections can be made between these autonomous web-based resources. Applications, technology and licensed e-content can be shared.

Access to data is increasingly important to collaborative research

While for now the research article is usually published in print, increasingly publication is in digital format only. Associated data supporting that research is stored in a number of distributed repositories that may not be centrally managed, and can be lost due to technology obsolescence or retirement. Research collaborations cross national boundaries. Data deposit and storage in accordance with international standards is needed for world class research and to support publication of articles based on that research.

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¹ Source: MarketView-STM Information, September 2006 Outsell Inc.

² Source: Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, U of Ottawa, Ottawa Citizen, November 2007.