Stephanie Haas University of Florida Gainesville, FL, USA. Patricia Merrikin and Armand Gribling FAO David Lubin Memorial Library Rome, Italy

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1 Date submitted: 27/05/2009 The Aquatic Commons Model: the roles of IAMSLIC, FAO and IFREMER in supporting open access to fisheries and aquaculture research and management Stephanie Haas University of Florida Gainesville, FL, USA Patricia Merrikin and Armand Gribling FAO David Lubin Memorial Library Rome, Italy Fred Merceur Bibliothèque La Pérouse Ifremer, France Meeting: 101. Agricultural Libraries WORLD LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CONGRESS: 75TH IFLA GENERAL CONFERENCE AND COUNCIL August 2009, Milan, Italy Abstract In 2006, the International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC) developed an integrative open access model to facilitate the global sharing of research on natural marine, estuarine /brackish and fresh water environments. Thematically, it includes all aspects of the science, technology, management and conservation of these environments, their organisms and resources, and the economic, sociological and legal aspects. IAMSLIC was specifically interested in facilitating sharing by researchers and institutions that do not have adequate IT support. The model consists of two key components: an open access repository and an open access harvester. The Aquatic Commons repository is EPrints based and supports self-submittal of digital resources. Over the last two years, more than 25 agencies have partnered with IAMSLIC members to begin to build this subject-based digital repository. The repository is supported by IAMSLIC through a formal contract with the Florida Center for Library Automation which provides software maintenance and upgrading and storage and backup for the entire repository project. FAO through its FishCode Programme, Support for Fisheries Research is participating in the development of the Aquatic Commons. FishCode support aims to facilitate the dissemination, sharing and preservation of fisheries management information from developing countries, much of which is published as grey literature. Funding has been targeted towards fuller participation by developing country institutions and capacity development is a large component of this activity. FAO has partnered with several national institutions in Africa to assess the resources required for digitization of legacy collections and their incorporation in the Aquatic Commons.

2 Submittals have been received from Bunda College of Agriculture, Malawi; Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina; Fisheries Society of Nigeria; International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, India; Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia- Pacific, Thailand; as well as many U.S. agencies, societies, and institutions. AVANO is an OAI harvester developed and maintained by IRFREMER in France. It is IAMSLIC s official harvester in the model and ingests metadata from the Aquatic Commons repository and 241 other marine and aquatic focused repositories worldwide. It currently provides metadata that is linked to over 163,000 full text documents. This paper will discuss the development, growth, and usage of these two services. Background The International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC) was founded in 1975 when twenty-three librarians from the US, Canada, and Bermuda met for two days to discuss mutual cooperation. Originating under the name of the East Coast Marine Science Librarians (ECMSL), the organization changed its name to IAMSLIC in 1978 to reflect its growing national and international membership. Its first newsletter was printed in February 1979, and the first published proceedings of its annual conference appeared in From its beginning, IAMSLIC offered a dynamic volunteer organization for information professionals who had a special interest in aquatic and marine sciences and their allied disciplines. Initially, the Association offered multiple opportunities and avenues for information exchange, but as it moved into the electronic/digital age more sophisticated forums for sharing have been developed. At the current time, IAMSLIC has 309 members world-wide with regional groups in Africa, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Europe, and the East/Gulf Coast and West Coast of North America. Current geographic membership includes: USA 115, Canada 15, Central America and Mexico 20, South America 18, Caribbean & Bermuda 8, Europe 64, Asia 22, South Pacific 13, Africa 30, Near East 4, Australia and New Zealand 14. Over the years, resource sharing has become a major focus of IAMSLIC. Currently, IAMSLIC members manage two key programs. The Z39.50 Distributed Library and Interlibrary Loan program allows 90 IAMSLIC member libraries from 25 countries to share materials via interlibrary loan and document delivery. In , 4479 items were requested from 41 different libraries including libraries in Iceland, Fiji, Malaysia, Mexico, Tanzania, and the Ukraine. The second program the Aquatic Commons Model has been under development since 2003 when Pauline Simpson, Southampton Oceanography Centre, proposed the formation of a digital repository network for IAMSLIC. Her proposal laid the foundations for the current Aquatic Commons program. AQUATIC COMMONS: Developmental Phase Between 2003 and 2005, multiple configurations of providing digital access were explored by IAMSLIC members. 1 By 2006, Pauline Simpson and Stephanie Haas had melded multiple ideas and suggestions from the IAMSLIC membership into an integrative open access Aquatic Commons Model to facilitate the global sharing of digital publications on natural marine, estuarine/brackish and fresh water environments. The Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA), Gainesville, FL provided proof-of-concept functionality of the Aquatic Commons repository portion of the model using EPrints software created by the University of Southampton. This model was presented at the Fall 2006 annual conference of IAMSLIC. A call for proposals for development of the repository was sent out to all IAMSLIC members. The development of an EPrints repository was awarded to FCLA who began work on loading and modifying the software from Southampton in late

3 EPrints was chosen because of its relative ease in mounting, its completeness in functionality, and its ease for user-based submittals. FCLA was awarded the contract because IAMSLIC was seeking to assure long-term stability and continuity that was not based on an IAMSLIC member being employed by an institution. The Aquatic Commons repository went live in August Conceptually, the Aquatic Commons model provides an integrative architecture accommodating researchers and research institutions at all technological levels. The model includes repositories, an official harvester Avano, and eventual metadata integration into larger aggregate services such as Google, BASE, OAIster, and Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA). Figure 1. AQUATIC COMMONS MODEL AS IT EXISTS TODAY Aquatic Commons was developed to: 1) Create a central metadata and digital document reservoir related to marine and aquatic science information worldwide, 2) Support IAMSLIC s long-term goal of helping researchers and the public freely access needed information, and 3) Integrate the efforts of the total community by harvesting metadata where available and by creating repository and harvesting opportunities where needed. It was of serendipitous good fortune that at the same meeting the IAMSLIC membership voted to support the creation of the Aquatic Commons repository, Fred Merceur of IFREMER, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, presented his work on the creation of Avano an OAI harvester for marine and aquatic sciences. Another key piece of the model had dropped into place! Avano is presented in detail later in this paper. 3

4 AQUATIC COMMONS: Content Focus Aquatic Commons is a thematic digital repository covering the natural marine, estuarine /brackish and fresh water environments. It includes all aspects of the science, technology, management and conservation of these environments, their organisms and resources, and the economic, sociological and legal aspects. The repository contains a growing collection of published and unpublished research, organizational publications, and other scholarly materials contributed by researchers, librarians, and their institutions. It is complementary to OceanDocs, which is supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) specifically to collect, preserve and facilitate access to all research output from members of their Ocean Data and Information Networks (ODINS). The records of both repositories are harvested by Avano. While marine libraries make up the majority of IAMSLIC members, institutions dealing with freshwater issues in particular small scale fisheries and aquaculture are a growing focus. Smaller scale operations found in many developing countries cannot easily adapt the techniques of large commercial operations. Increasing pressures from population growth, environmental change and degradation, etc., all impact livelihoods based on freshwater resources. Indeed, it is this concern with fisheries management in developing countries that is the basis for the involvement of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the development of Aquatic Commons. FAO s INVOLVEMENT: Grey literature and fisheries management From ancient times, fishing has been a major food source for humanity, providing not only sustenance but a dependable livelihood throughout the world. However, as technologically based harvesting techniques were adopted, it became apparent that living aquatic resources, while renewable, are not infinite. Clear signs of over-exploitation of important fish stocks, modifications of ecosystems, significant economic losses, and international conflicts on management and fish trade threaten the long-term sustainability of fisheries and their contribution to world food supplies. In 1991 the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) asked FAO to develop the concept of responsible fisheries and elaborate a Code of Conduct to foster its application. The FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries 2 (hereafter referred to as the Code) was adopted by FAO Members in October Underpinning the implementation of the Code is the need for two broad categories of information: general information about the Code including its goals and coverage, and specialized and technical information to support: research, resource management and use, policy, and development. Feedback from many FAO Members, particularly those in developing countries, indicates that lack of access to timely, relevant and accurate information is a serious constraint to the implementation of the Code. Access is just one of a series of related information problems. Poor opportunities to publish and disseminate fisheries information in many developing countries is leading to a serious and growing under-representation of their research within the scientific literature. This in turn impacts a country s ability to manage sustainable fisheries. For these reasons FAO, mainly through its FishCode Programme, Support for Fisheries Research is supporting development of the Aquatic Commons as one of several mechanisms to improve the availability and sharing of fisheries management and related information. FAO s support for the Aquatic Commons is intended to assist fishery institutions in developing countries with the following broad objectives: 4

5 improve access, sharing and preservation of fisheries and aquaculture management publications, integrate publications from developing countries into the mainstream of digital information, and develop capacity in the production and sharing of digital publications. FAO has conducted several studies in recent years to ascertain the amount of fisheries information that is published as grey literature. Methods of dissemination have also been reviewed. 2 Much of the fisheries management information is contained in grey literature which is often difficult to discover and access. Long-term availability is of particular concern, as some grey literature is the only source of information on a particular topic. Fishery management plans, policy guidelines and institutional publications can be difficult to find without knowledge of the originating agency. An increasing amount of grey literature is now being published on the World Wide Web, often using web publishing systems. However, for ease of discovery and for longer-term preservation and availability, there is a need for better organization and more secure storage: basically the services offered by digital repositories. The Aquatic Commons facilitates the exchange of fisheries research and management information and offers repository services where local IT systems and support are limited. While many fisheries organizations and institutions put publications on the web, most do not provide OAI compliant metadata that can be harvested. With membership on the AC Task Force, the AC Board, and more recently the Collection Development Working Group, FAO has actively collaborated with IAMSLIC to develop and steer the early stages of the Aquatic Commons. Currently, the Working Group is targeting and soliciting grey literature for inclusion in the Aquatic Commons. Of particular interest are items in demand by IAMSLIC members that are difficult to access by conventional means. The Fisheries Library holds an unequalled collection of literature from developing countries. A review of the collection in 1998 identified 612 unique fisheries serials titles from Africa, Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, and Oceania. These were added to IAMSLIC s Union List of Marine and Aquatic Serials and later in the Z39.50 Distributed Library, thus making them more readily available to worldwide fisheries libraries. Expanded work with several fisheries libraries, especially in Africa, has resulted in the inclusion of their own serial listing, again increasing visibility and availability. Now, the FAO Fisheries library is facilitating the challenge of making the publications themselves available digitally through the Internet. The development of many internet-based systems and services is improving the dissemination of scholarly journals from developing countries. African Journals Online (AJOL) and ScientificElectronic Library Online (SciELO) in Latin America are important for fisheries and are examples of efforts to promote regional science. However, grey literature is also essential to fisheries science and management and the publications of fisheries institutions and organizations are often the most relevant source for local and regional research: providing detailed biological, sociological and physical information. Many fisheries institutions are struggling to develop effective, and affordable, digital dissemination programmes for their current publications. Very few are in a position to digitize their older collections. Using FAO Library s own collection of this literature a preliminary study was undertaken to evaluate the best means of digitizing legacy publications for inclusion in the Aquatic Commons. Small case studies were undertaken in collaboration with fisheries institutions in Nigeria, Malawi and Uganda with the following objectives: Awareness raising about the Aquatic Commons and its role in fisheries information sharing; Assessment of the technical requirements for digitizing legacy collections; Assessment of the financial and human resources required; Repatriation of publications in digital format to the originating institution; Lessons learned in digitization and the preparation of guidelines for national institutions 5

6 The results of these case studies highlighted the problems that developing country institutions would need to confront to make available their legacy publications in digital form. In addition to hardware and software not yet readily available in many institutions, problems included such basic issues as poor document print quality and non standard size of older publications that required considerable pre-processing (photocopying and standardization) and image processing after scanning. Given the number of institutions involved and taking into account the limited resources of IAMSLIC and FAO, it became obvious that a more rational and cost-effective digitization programme would be needed for the important, widely dispersed and often at risk collections of developing country fisheries publications. It should also be noted that at a meeting with the Internet Archive in November 2007, their advice was already pointing in the direction of large-scale digitization in locations where the bulk of the material is held. FAO would be one such location and the elaboration of a proposal for external funding is being considered by the Fisheries Department. ASFA is also funding the digitization of older collections of some ASFA partners. Some of the recent specific developments of the Aquatic Commons being funded via the FishCode Programme are also with developing country participation in mind and arose in part from discussions at a Workshop held at Bunda College of Agriculture, Malawi in September The Workshop on Development of the Aquatic Commons: open access to inland fisheries and aquaculture information, was held in collaboration with the 3 rd Conference of the African Regional Group of IAMSLIC. The 23 Workshop participants, including information professionals from 9 African countries and 10 fisheries researchers from Malawi, held strong views and proposed specific actions on the following aspects of AC: Aquatic Commons should be an authoritative and high quality repository - Institutions and scientists, particularly in developing countries and where institutional alternatives are not available, should be proud to participate, endorse and promote AC. Institutional ownership and working in communities is essential - Institutions would be more likely to endorse and promote AC if they could see immediate benefits that can also be pointed out to funding agencies. Collaboration at national or regional level with specific partners on particular projects should be identifiable. Awareness raising - lack of awareness of information resources by stakeholders was regarded in some cases as more of a constraint than lack of access. The paper by the National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research (Nigeria), Canvassing for participation in the Aquatic Commons repository: experience from Nigeria, provides valuable insight and is probably representative of the situation in other developing countries. Depositing born digital documents - the library, rather than individual stakeholders, would need to take responsibility for depositing documents. AC would provide an opportunity to publish much information which cannot be shared at present due to lack of publishing opportunities. Digitizing legacy collections large volumes of unique and valuable documents are held in various locations in many countries. Access to this historical data and information is vital for the conservation of biodiversity, fisheries management and scientific research. There are also large historical collections in organizations with a past or present regional / global mandate e.g. FAO, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), Freshwater Biological Association UK (FBA). In many cases this information is no longer available in the countries where the research was carried out and there is a need to digitize and repatriate it. This requires a longer term strategy and significant external funding. To address some of the above issues, FCLA is implementing the following AC enhancements at the request of FAO, in addition to the development of other functionality requested by IAMSLIC: 6

7 development of the Issuing Agency field to enhance the visibility of depositing institutions; development of an offline batch loading functionality for institutions with unreliable access or low bandwidth; additional search interfaces, help screens and technical guidelines in French and Spanish. From FAO s point of view, the Aquatic Commons has achieved a great deal in a relatively short time and with very modest funding. Its main driving forces are the well established collaboration between IAMSLIC members, a commitment to Open Access, and the combined expertise of an international community of information professionals. The potential is enormous and the benefits already obvious to both depositors and users. There is still a lot of work to be done and the involvement of organizations such as FAO is vital to assist developing country institutions become full participants as well as equal beneficiaries. STATISTICS ON GROWTH AND USE OF AQUATIC COMMONS Since coming online in August 2007, the Aquatic Commons repository has experienced a steady growth in both deposits and downloads. The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) maintained by the University of Southampton has charted the Aquatic Commons repository growth. Figure 2. Number of items deposited in Aquatic Commons repository since

8 The total downloads of records since inception are given in Figure 3. Figure 3. Total downloads since September 2007 As of March 2009, Aquatic Commons had 142 items classed in the Aquaculture category and 632 items classed in Fisheries. The major contributors to documents in the Aquaculture category include the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific; WorldFish Center, Penang; Support to Regional Aquatic Resources Management (STREAM Initiative); Fisheries Society of Nigeria; Bunda College of Agriculture, Malawi; National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, Nigeria; and the Argentina Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadeira. An indication of the use of documents is given in Figure 4 which depicts the top ten downloads since the repository came online in August of Six of the ten highest downloaded items are issues of Aquaculture Asia, produced by the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific. Figure 4. Top 10 downloaded items between August March 2009 AVANO: THE OFFICIAL HARVESTER As previously mentioned, the OAI harvester Avano 4 was launched in September Avano provides access to resources linked to all marine sciences (aquaculture, fishing, marine biology, marine geology, marine economy, oceanography, marine ecology...) as well as resources linked to fresh water resources (lake and river management, wet area restoration, wastewater treatment...). 8

9 It collects the bibliographical data of electronic resources available in over 256 servers including institutional repositories (229), thematic repositories (4), national repositories (10), and commercial journals (5). Via the OAI-PMH protocol, Avano aggregates the metadata in a centralized database. Avano Web interface then offers centralized searching and viewing of resource metadata disseminated between different servers. In March 2009, Avano provided centralized access to more than 170,000 references of electronic resources: mainly full text documents freely accessible but also, images, video, datasets, etc. Figure 5. Number of records available through each type of repository. (N=170,000) Figure 6. Geographical localization of the records available through Avano The records from servers such as ArXiv or Aquatic Commons are classified in the International section. Avano harvests metadata from large repositories that do not necessarily have a marine and/or aquatic focus, but a keyword filtering mechanism limits the ingesting of records to those that match a thesaurus of appropriate terms. Currently, Avano s largest contributors are PubMed (18,830) and OSTI Repository (U.S. Department of Energy) (13,276). This is probably a reflection of early adoption of digital technologies rather than an indication of their involvement in the Aquatic Sciences. 9

10 In terms of contributors in the area of aquaculture related records, a more logical distribution is found. Table 1 : Top 20 of data contributors for aquaculture resources Data contributors Nb. records FAO Catalogue Online 1815 ArchiMer, repository of French research Institute Ifremer 721 WorldFish Publications, 261 Directory of open access journals 208 Plymouth: Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science 201 University of Tasmania eprints Repository 188 Australasian Digital Theses 175 Open Marine Archive, managed by the Flanders Marine Institute 148 PubMed Central 125 Horizon, Institutional repository of French research Institute IRD 124 OSTI Repository, U.S. Department of Energy 119 OceanDocs, Open Archive for Research & Publications in Marine Science in Africa and Latin America 116 African Journals Online, commercial publisher 113 BDTD, repository of the Brazilian research institution IBICT 85 Aquatic Commons 81 Digital Library of the Commons, managed by the Indiana university 71 University of Nebraska Repository 60 DRS, Institutional repository of the German research Institute NIO 54 Hrcak, portal of scientific journals of Croatia 54 University of Stirling Digital Repository 46 Since its launch in 2006, Avano s growth has mirrored the trends in the Open Access movement. Figure shows the progress towards ingest and processing of the records from existing repositories. Figure 7: Increase of the number of records available in Avano since its launching It is not possible to distinguish Avano users by research interest, but an analysis of IP addresses shows that nearly 45% of visitors come from universities, research organizations and large industrial groups. The other 55% percent of the visitors come through various Internet service providers. An analysis of end-users queries suggests that Avano is mostly used by scientists, students and professionals including aquaculturists. 10

11 Fig. 8. Geographical synthesis, generated by Google analytics, of the world-wide connections to Avano in March THE FUTURE It is becoming increasingly clear that the sustainability of living resources in all waters is dependent upon the ability of resource managers to find, interpret, and use existing data to implement effective management strategies. The Aquatic Commons model represents the collaborative efforts of IAMSLIC, FAO, and Ifremer to assist in making information available to the global research community. You are cordially invited to join the effort at any level. If you have digital items, contribute them to the Aquatic Commons repository; if you have a repository, contact Avano to have your metadata harvested. Footnotes 1 Diving into Our Digital Future: Defining IAMSLIC s digital architecture. IAMSLIC Annual Proceedings Online at [Accessed April 24, 2009] 2 FAO. Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Rome: FAO, Online at [Accessed April 24, 2009] 3 Webster, J.G. & Collins, J Fisheries information in developing countries: support to the implementation of the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. FAO Fisheries Circular, No. 1006, Rome. FAO. 127 p. Online at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/007/y5847e/y5847e00.pdf [Accessed April 24, 2009] 4 Merceur Fred Avano, assessment of one year management of a thematic OAI-PMH harvester. 33rd IAMSLIC Annual Conference Changes on the Horizon October 7-11, 2007 Sarasota, Florida, USA Online at [Accessed April 24, 2009] 11