MarBEF Open Archive (MOA)
Introduction | Search

In addition to MOA, the MarBEF Publication Series holds all MarBEF papers, but this section is password protected and is only accessible for registered MarBEF members.

Through MOA, MarBEF wants to give immediate, permanent and free access to as many published research results as possible. Any MarBEF publication is considered, be it a grey report or a peer-reviewed article in an international journal. This open archive should enhance the visibility, distribution and use of these results, and it supports a much better scientific communication.

This initiative will only be successful with the active collaboration of the entire MarBEF community. Each one of you is invited to contribute to this digital archive and hereby will support our philosophy of Open Access, i.e. free and permanent access to scientific information.

MOA is a fully legal project

In MOA, MarBEF only releases those publications for which the publishers agree on the concept and principles of open digital archives. Concerning grey literature: in most cases the author can give permission to submit grey publications to a digital archive.

Furthermore, MOA is fully supported by its community, at the 2006 MarBEF General Assembly in Lecce, the network voted unanimously for this open archive.

MOA is free to use. However, some basic rules do apply:

• These digital documents can be downloaded and saved for personal use only
• Reproduction or further distribution, partly or in whole, in any format, of these documents, is not allowed
• Each publication should be cited to its original format
• When using parts of, or whole publications in your own work, permission from the author(s) or copyright holder(s) is always needed

What are the advantages of MOA?

• Articles that are freely available on line are more highly cited. For greater impact and faster scientific progress, authors and publishers should aim to make research easy to access. From: Steve Laurence. Online or invisible. Nature, 411 (6837): 521. [full text article]
• For the scientists:
• MOA makes up a central archive of all his/her work
• MOA increases the diffusion of his/her work and increases its impact
• MOA makes up a CV and a tool for reporting
• For our MarBEF network :
• MOA increases the visibility and the prestige of our marine biodiversity community
• MOA attracts researchers and students
• For the entire marine research community:
  • MOA gives a global access to MarBEF's research results
  • MOA assures the long-term repository of our academic output
• For the circulation of publications:
• Publications (papers, reports, theses etc.) are better accessible online
• Publications are more cited
• Publications are better dispersed
• The information can be searched at all levels through databases
• There is more than one added value!
• Hit counts per publication is possible
• Personalized output is possible
• Citation analysis is possible

What are the disadvantages?

• Work load: It involves quite a bit more administration, but the majority of all the work will be done at the MarBEF data management office, who's managing and maintaining the system.

What about quality control, the 'peer review'?

An Open Archive fully supports peer review. Authors can keep publishing in peer-reviewed journals. It should be seen as an added value that these papers will be freely available when deposited in an open archive.

Effects on the establishment of the publishers world?

• Editors are sometimes payed by publishers: remains
• Build up reputations within the current publishing system: remains
• See the open-access-movement as 'anti-publishers' point of view is a myth: repositories are complementary to the products of publishers and do not have commercial objectives.

For an overwiew of the most frequent myths on Open Access and their refutation.

• Basic information on 'Open Access to scholarly information'
• Comprehensive Open Access guide
• Website of the 'Open Archives Initiative'
• The Directory of Open Access Repositories - OpenDOAR