Many thanks to Hideki Uchijma, Librarian Kanazawa University Library for the very comprehensive and conscientious response below.

The response provides more accurate estimates of the percentage (11.1%) of Japanese annual refereed research article output that is currently being self-archived in the 158 Japanese Institutional Repositories that are being harvested by JAIRO, basing the estimate on the ISI Thompson-Reuters subset, an excellent first approximation (which we and others have also used to do such estimates), and confirming that Japan's unmandated self-archiving rate indeed falls within the global average baseline of 5-25%.

Hideki Uchijima also sends the good news that Hokkaido University (already registered in ROARMAP in 2008 as having an OA policy, but not yet an OA mandate) might soon be adopting a self-archiving mandate (and this might encourage other Japanese universities to do likewise): Librarian Kanazawa University Library

And last, Hideki Uchijima will now also try to persuade the IR managers of the IR managers of the 88 Japanese universities (out of the 158 JAIRO total) who have not registered their IRs in ROAR to do so.

If all librarians, IR managers and OA activists worldwide were as attentive and responsive as Kanazawa University's librarian, the world would reach its goal of 100% OA far sooner. (Many are, but far, far more need to be!)

With much appreciation,

Stevan Harnad

On 2010-09-17, at 12:44 AM, uchijima hideki wrote:

> Dear Professor Harnad,
>
> Thank you for your interest and comments in JAIRO and institutional repositories in Japan.
> IR has increased at a high speed in the past 5 years under the positive influence of NII's
> financial support and the formation of IR communities in Japan. 1 million contents and 0.7
> million full-texts are the results of those succesful efforts.
>
>> Congratulations to Japan's JAIRO http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/en/ for harvesting the 700,000 full-texts (out of one million total) self-
> archived in Japan's 158 Institutional Repositories since 2007.
>
> I'v attached an excel file indicating the number of articles submitted and haversted by JAIRO on
> a monthly basis during 2009. According to this statistics, total number of researh articles is
> 27,718 and it consists of 8,307 English papers and 19,411 Japanese ones (incl. other some languages).
>
> *You can download the same data from http://irdb.nii.ac.jp/analysis/index_e.php
>
> *It should be noted that year 2009 in JAIRO means Japanese fiscal year from April 2009 to March 2010.
> So I used figures from the period between January to December in 2009 for the comparison below.
>
> On the other hand, according to ISI Thomson-Reuter's Global Reseach Report Japan (published this June),
> total number of English articles published in the journals which are included in the Web of Science is
> approximately 75,000. It is next to UK.
>
> TR Global Report Japan http://researchanalytics.thomsonreuters.com/grr/
> (Resigtration is required, but freely available)
>
> So just comparing the number of papers writen in English in 2009 (8,307 / 75,000), the ratio of self-archive
> is about 11.1%. As you expected, it falls within the unmandated average of 5%-20%.
> I think 158 IRs do cover almost all the reseach-intensive universities in Japan. In that sense, this
> comparison using WoS's figure may be relatively reasonable for the rough estimation of the self-archive rate
> on a national level.
>
> But I don't have any statisitcal data concerning the annual outputs of all the japanese researchers, so it
> is difficult to estimate the accurate percentage of the self-archive by academics.
> *Any comments are welcome from Japan.
>
>> From the growth chart (if I have interpreted it correctly), about 75% of 50,000 articles (i.e., 35,000 full-texts) were deposited
> in 2009. If we can assume that those deposits were all articles published within that same year (or the preceding one), then the
> question is: What percentage of Japan's (or of those 158 institutions') annual portion of the 2.5 million articles published yearly
> worldwide do these 35,000 full-texts represent? Does it exceed the worldwide unmandated baseline of 5-25%?
>
> Judging from the ratio above, our IR communities will have to carry out as many advocacies as possilbe toward academics
> now and in the future. I'd think it would be a common task for repository and research communities around the globe.
>
> As you might know, I hear Hokkaido University (one of top 10 universities in Japan and hosting IR named HUSCAP) is now
> considering to adopt a university-wide mandate. If Hokkaido will succeed, it may have a positive impact on universities
> and other higer education institutions. At least, I hope so.
>
> HOKKAIDO http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Hokkaido%20University
> HUSCAP http://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/index.jsp?locale=en&lang=en
>
>> The reason I stress this point is that it is important that we do not content ourselves with absolute self-archiving totals and
> growth rates that look sizeable considered in isolation. The figure to beat is the unmandated baseline of 5-25%, and the only
> institutions that consistently beat it are those that mandate self-archiving. Their deposit rates jump to 60% and approach 100%
> within a few years.
>> There are already 170 self-archiving mandates worldwide registered in ROARMAP -- 96 institutional, 24 departmental and 46 funder
> mandates -- but alas none yet from Japan. If there are any, it would be very helpful if they would be registered in ROARMAP http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
>
> I'm also sorry to hear about such a low registration rate as open access repository in the ROAR. We will try to persuade
> IR managers to register their IRs.
>
>> Also, although Japan has at least 158 repositories, only 77 of them are registered in ROAR:
>> http://roar.eprints.org/view/geoname/geoname=5F2=5FJP.html
>> It would be very helpful if the rest were registered in ROAR too...
>> Stevan Harnad
>
> Best Wishes,
> Hideki
>
>
>
> *Mail address changes from @ad. to @adm.
> Hideki UCHIJIMA
> Kanazawa University Library
> Kakuma
> Kanazawa City
> Ishikawa Prefecture JAPAN
> Telephone : +81-76-264-5203
> Fax : +81-76-234-4050
> Mail:[log in to unmask]
> http://www.lib.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/index.html
> http://dspace.lib.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/dspace
> <Articles by Japanese Reseachers.xls>