Open Insights: Open Access Scientific Journals – The Beginning of an Era

The OLH Open Access Award 2020 awardee’s report: the National Library of Kosovo

Open Access Scientific Journals – The Beginning of an Era

An Open Insights essay by Zaide Krapi, Head of the Periodical Sector, National Library of Kosovo

Firstly, on behalf of the National Library of Kosovo, I would like to thank the Open Library of Humanities and its staff for their support in helping us to develop our project, titled  “Open Access Scientific Journals - National Library of Kosovo”. Last year, we applied to the Open Library of Humanities Open Access Award 2020, a new award aimed at funding open access projects across the globe. We were delighted when we were awarded funding to help us begin a larger project that we completed this year. This blog outlines the background to and importance of our project, and where we’re headed next.

Background

The arrival of the Internet and technological development has had a profound impact on public libraries in Kosovo. However, these developments have also raised problems and challenges regarding the protection of information, authors and publishers. Since the 1980s and 1990s, and especially before the Kosovo war, libraries in Kosovo were exploding with a diverse array of titles, but processing and storing this huge volume of material met with many politically-induced problems during that time. This chaotic situation resulted in physical damage to library material such as daily newspapers and scientific journals. 

Fast forward to today: with a growing demand from readers to be able to find materials quickly, and their  reluctance to hunt through physical repositories, the National Library of Kosovo is faced with significant  challenges posed by the shift to digitalization and Open Access (OA). As active library staff members, we are continually searching for projects around the world that we can use  to grow public awareness of this huge challenge, and the increasing demand for openly accessible materials. The Open Access Project funded by the Open Library of Humanities was a milestone for us, as it allowed us to generate greater awareness of the pressing need for a change within the system.

The National Library of Kosovo and the Digital Age

Across the world, libraries have traditionally been the richest repositories of human knowledge and  cultural wealth. The National Library of Kosovo (NLK), a traditional institution, is currently going through a period of radical change. As traditional methods of collecting, storing and sharing information become more expensive and time-consuming, digitizing library material is regarded as a major advance over the physical maintenance of some library services. In line with this, a few steps have been taken towards digitization, with the opening of the digital library within the NLK in 2018. The team is now in the process of developing several projects, starting with the scanning of the first Albanian language newspaper ‘Rilindja’, originally published in 1945 in Kosovo. However, demand currently far outstrips the NLK’s capacity to deliver! 

Collections in the National Library of Kosovo’s Periodical Section 

To provide some contextualization to the above, within the National Library of Kosovo there are many sectors, including the periodical sector (i.e journals, magazines, newspapers),  the acquisition sector, the cataloguing sector, and several other supporting sectors. The periodical  sector was established at the very  beginning of the library’s history (the library dates from around 1944), and despite facing many challenges, this section today contains over 12,000 journal titles and 5,600 newspaper titles, published from different regions in Kosovo, the Balkans, Europe and from abroad. Not only is the material diverse in authorship, it is also rich in content, with a broad range of disciplines from the social sciences to cultural and political theory. In order to document this diverse material, we conducted a research audit of  publications in Kosovo called  ‘De visu’ (‘Journal in Hand’). The audit found that most of these publications have  existed since 1946 and that most of them continue to be published, which amounts to more than a half a century of publications. As Kosovo is a multiethnic country, some of the articles have also been published in several languages. As an illustration, the following figure (Fig. 1) shows the increase in the number of journals published as physical copies, showing the number of journals published in Kosovo each year from 1946 to 2020:

Fig. 1. Journals published in Kosovo (1946-2020)

A second graph (below) shows how, from these journals, we have derived the type and profile of journals being published in Kosovo (Fig. 2):

Fig. 2. Journals published in Kosovo by content (1946-2020)

Indeed, there are a considerable number of articles, journals and rich materials that encapsulate human, cultural and organizational information on many different subjects. These are some of the early findings from our project on Open Access in Kosovo. 

So, what relationship does the digital library have with more traditional print library institutions? The traditional library clearly has a ‘culture’ that is different from the digital library service. Of course, despite the challenges of shifting  mindsets from a traditional to a digital library, many people in the library world believe that digital libraries can simply be plotted onto traditional print-based libraries. This is certainly not the case for us in Kosovo. The new formats are not seen as replacing the old ones, but rather as co-existing with them.

The Importance of Open Access Scientific Journals in Kosovo

Kosovo is at the very beginning of the transition to digitization and OA.  Those who would benefit the most from Open Access are clearly students and universities. According to the  Kosovo Agency of Statistics, Kosovo has a population with an average age of 27 years. Younger generations prefer reading online and this increasing trend presents an opportunity for libraries. Illustrative of this, for instance, is the number of students in public and private universities, which is around 120,000, with 80% of students following their studies in any of our 7 Public Universities in Kosovo, and 20% of them enrolled in any of our 24 Private Universities. 

As well as younger generations, the large number of independent researchers, many of whom are already retired, would benefit from increased digitization. Our institution is also visited by many researchers with disabilities, who want to search and read materials from the library collections. Our experience of serving this important and underrepresented part of the population highlighted, for us, the human and ethical aspects of library custodianship. The National Library of Kosovo has hundreds of thousands of volumes, including monographs, documents, maps and scientific publications by local authors. In these early stages of the transition to digitization and OA, there is still a need to talk, to discuss and to hold meetings both in and outside Kosovo. It is an exciting moment because we are igniting a change that is long overdue. Thanks to the funding provided by the Open Library of Humanities for this project in 2020, we have started to raise awareness around this issue by holding meetings with professors and students and publishing content on open access. 

The Project Event

The project event (Fig. 3.) was held during the annual ‘Library Week in Kosovo’, with the aim of increasing the event’s visibility. Examining and analyzing the reality, importance and ethical aspects of the National  Library as a center of scientific-academic information, during the event we also informed the public about the importance of the Open Library of Humanities as an organisation. Some of the main conclusions that we derived are:

1. With the development of Open Access, the mission and vision of the library would be fulfilled  as an important step in its development strategy. The mission of the library is to collect, preserve, promote and make accessible the documentary and intellectual heritage of Kosovo.

2. An essential advantage of Open Access is having charge-free articles which are offered to anyone who wants to read them. For the reader and the library, the benefits become immediately apparent as funded academic research is made freely available.

3. Another advantage of OA is that it benefits authors, as a larger number of readers also means a larger potential number of citations.

4. Given that Kosovo is a state with a comparatively lower GDP (according to the Kosovo Agency of Statistics, in 2019 Kosovo's GDP was 7.5 Billion Dollars), i.e., with insufficient income, Open Access would give researchers the opportunity to participate in international research, without publication fees. Thus, since researchers and institutions may not be able to afford to subscribe to academic journals, Open Access opportunities would help them considerably.

5. With the possibility of Open Access to information, new ideas can be shared, and new research pathways opened up.

6. The National Library of Kosovo,  with equal distribution of information, will be playing  a multi-part role in  the following areas:

● Leading conversion of library materials into digital form;

● Encouraging governing institutions to focus and rely more on investing in and supporting knowledge creation and dissemination; 

● Disseminating and collecting knowledge uniformly;

● Enabling the dissemination of information via Open Access channels; 

● Assisting in identifying, creating, updating and leading the movement towards Open Access during this transitional period, and enabling the dissemination of information to the entire community. 

Fig. 3. Photo from the project event 

With this project supported by Open Library of Humanities, alongside these project developments and the unwavering commitment of us all at the National Library of Kosovo, I believe we will contribute to and influence the development of Open Access scientific journals in Kosovo. We believe this project was a path towards more discussion, opinions, arguments and ideas with the general public and academia on the possibilities of Open Access. As the largest library institution in the country of Kosovo, we have not stopped looking for ways to create facilities, to enable learning, to help readers and to stoke their curiosity, desire and thirst for reading at the highest possible level. 

The National Library of Kosovo must now study and plan how to establish an Open Access framework using library automation systems, how to improve the quality of purchasing, how to improve the borrowing system, and how to solve the reading issues that our readers are currently facing. The basic function of the library is to preserve human cultural heritage, launch social education, transmit scientific and technological information, and develop bridges that connect the legal, social, and most importantly, humanitarian aspects of open knowledge, because we owe it to the community. The more we disseminate information, the more we enrich and nurture a well-read society at all levels.

Our thanks to Zaide Krapi, and keep an eye out for more #EmpowOA Open Insights soon!