“If I have been able to see further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants” – this famous quote from a letter by Isaac Newton is still a wonderful metaphor for the work of scientists. Research is always founded on other research, and it becomes a foundation for others’ research – at least if other scientists can (afford to) access the relevant publication. With 24000 peer-reviewed journals worldwide, that can be difficult. But the internet now provides a new way to “become a giant”: Researchers can complement access to their own published journal articles by also “self-archiving” them on the web.

More and more institutions have an OAI repository (the acronym stands for Open Archives Initiative) for self-archiving their publications. Different repositories are drawn together into one virtual archive by special search engines such as OAIster which currently harvests 7 million articles from 617 institutions worldwide.

To create a repository, an institution only installs a free GNU software. It is worth the effort: Complementary self-archiving increases the citation impact of an article by up to 250%. However, only 15% of scientists as yet enjoy this benefit. Some research institutions and funders (including the EC) are already proposing to request or even require open access self-archiving. But scientists only tap its full potential if they make their articles accessible immediately upon acceptance for publication. 93% of journals already allow that. Even for the rest, the self-archiving software offers a solution: If someone clicks on the title of the article, an automatic e-mail requests an e-print from the author.

In this session, scientists and representatives of scientific and funding institutions are introduced to open-access self-archiving and its effect on research impact.

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