Open Access News
2013
April
POLICY
(Research Councils UK - RCUK)
Revised open access policy
- Policy supports both the 'Green' and 'Gold' routes to Open Access, although RCUK have a 'preference' for Gold
- Different embargo periods permitted across the disciplines
- Comprehensive, evidence-based reviews of the policy planned for 2014 and periodically thereafter (probably in 2016 and 2018)
- Confirmed that journal impact factors are not taken into account when the Research Councils make funding decisions
- New web page RCUK Policy on Open Access FAQs
STATEMENT
(Wellcome Trust)
Position statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research
- Papers accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, and are supported in whole or in part by Wellcome Trust funding
- Available through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC)
- As soon as possible, and in any event within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication
- Grant-holders will be provided with additional funding through their institutions
- Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) required from 1 April 2013 wherever Trust funds used to pay an open access fee
- Authors' FAQs
February
POLICY MEMORANDUM
(United States Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP))
Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research
- Obama Administration supports citizen access to scientific research results funded by their taxes
- Published results of federally funded research must be freely available to the public within 1 year of publication (applies to agencies with over $100M R&D budget)
- Researchers must also better account for and manage their digital data
REPORT
(House of Lords Science and Technology Committee)
Lack of clarity over open access is 'unacceptable' - RCUK must clarify and monitor its implementation closely
- Committee criticises RCUK for failures in communicating its open access policy
- Welcomes RCUK's recent announcement that policy will be phased in over 5 years
- Committee calls for monitoring of the impact of the policy:
- Whether different disciplines require different embargo periods, licenses and primary models of publication
- Whether the UK, in stating a preference for Gold OA, is moving in the same direction as other countries which are mandating open access
- Whether article processing charges have adversely affected the number of international articles published in UK journals
- Effects on the quality of peer review
- Impact on the number of collaborations by UK researchers
- Effects on learned societies
- Committee calls on the Government to conduct a full cost-benefit analysis of the policy, and the effectiveness of RCUK's consultation process
2012
November
PRESS RELEASE
(Research Councils UK - RCUK)
RCUK announces details of block grant funding mechanism for Article Processing Charges (APCs)
- Universities' share of funding is in proportion to the amount of direct labour costs awarded on grants received from April 2009 to March 2012
- Funding will enable around 45% of RC-funded papers to be published through payment of APCs in 2013/14 (i.e. 'Gold' open access)
- Increasing to 50% in 2014/15
- Interim review planned for 2014 to consider how the system is working, and to determine funding levels post 2014/15
- 75% of papers are expected to be funded through Gold open access by 2017/18
- Remaining 25% to be made open access via the 'Green' route (i.e. deposit of authors' manuscripts in repositories after a limited embargo period)
September
PRESS RELEASE
(UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills)
Government invests £10 million to help universities move to open access
- 30 UK universities will receive funding through the Research Councils and UK higher education funding councils
- Money is to kick-start the process of developing policies and setting up institutional funds to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs)
- Funding is in addition to the RCUK blocks grants available from 1 April 2013 onwards
- UK Funding Councils to launch a consultation this autumn about the requirement that outputs for future REFs should be as widely accessible as possible
August
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
(Times Higher Education)
Dubious open access journals keen to attract unwary academics - and their cash
- Dr Jeffrey Beall's (University of Colorado Denver Librarian) list of predatory open access publishers
- Exploit Gold OA for their own profit, maximising their income by publishing all submissions with little or not scrutiny
- Stories of academics' names added to editorial boards without their knowledge
- Can be difficult to judge the credentials of a journal
- Criteria for determining predatory publishers
July
STATEMENT
(RLUK/SCONUL)
Response to Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) statement on access to publicly funded research
- Welcome commitment of UK Government to ensuring that publicly funded scientific research is freely available
- For a period, UK will pay to make its research OA while continuing to pay to access the rest of the world's research
- Disappointed that UK Government has not announced new funding to facilitate the transition period to OA
- Vital that monitoring mechanisms are put in place to ensure that subscription prices are adjusted where authors have paid to publish OA
- Neither Finch report nor UK Government response sufficiently recognises the role of repositories in the UK
- Strongly support revised RCUK OA policy which fully recognises the importance of Green OA
- Concern at length of embargo periods for Green OA in the Finch Report
- Want more modelling of potential transition scenarios, in particular focussing on interplay/interdependence of Green and Gold OA
ANNOUNCEMENT
(Research Councils UK - RCUK)
New open access policy
- Peer reviewed research papers resulting from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils
- Must be published in journals which either:
- Offer a 'pay to publish' option or
- Allow deposit in a subject or institutional repository after a mandated maximum embargo period
- Creative Commons 'Attribution' licence (CC-BY) is to be used when an Article Processing Charge (APC) is levied
- CC-BY allows others to modify, build upon and/or distribute the licensed work (including for commercial purposes) as long as the original author is credited
- Block grants will be provided to eligible UK Higher Education Institutions to support payment of APCs
- Eligible organisations will be expected to set-up and manage their own publication funds
June
PRESS RELEASE
(Wellcome Trust)
Wellcome Trust strengthens its open access policy
- Research articles published from 1 October 2009 onwards, funded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust
- Must be made available via the UK PubMed Central repository within six months of the date of publication
- Failure to comply could result in final grant payments being withheld and non-compliant publications being discounted when applying for further funding
- Trust-funded researchers can access additional funds to cover open access publishing costs
RADIO PROGRAMME
(Material Word 28/6/2012, BBC Radio 4, 1.10 - 12.40 mins)
Interview with Dame Janet Finch
- Strong moral case for tax-payers benefitting from tax-payer-funded research
- Need to change in a measured way over a period of time
- Need global consensus and there are signs of momentum in Europe and US
- 10% of journal articles worldwide are open access and the numbers growing
- Role for intermediaries to help interpret research
- Ben Goldacre, scientist & journalist
- Open data has to happen
- But subscription journals will continue as long anyone of any importance in the world wants to publish in them
STATEMENT
(Stephen Anderson, Executive Director, Academy of Social Sciences)
Impact of Finch recommendations on learned societies
- Societies contribute significantly to the UK research ecology
- They must not suffer unintended collateral damage in the move to open access
- Need for a sustainable open access publishing model
REPORT
(Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings - Finch Group)
UK should embrace the transition to open access
- Group commissioned by the UK Government
- Independent group of representatives from universities, funders, learned societies, publishers and libraries
- Examined how to expand access to peer-reviewed publications arising from research undertaken in the UK and rest of the world
- Aim was to identify key goals and guiding principles in the transition period to wider access
- Proposals imply cultural change and a fundamental shift in how research is published and disseminated
- Co-ordinated action needed to realise the social, economic and cultural benefits of open access research
- Key recommendations
- Clear policy support for publication in open access or hybrid journals funded by APCs as the main
vehicle for the publication of research
- Research Councils should establish more effective and flexible arrangements to meet APCs
- Universities should establish publication funds to pay for APCs
- Universities and funders could use their purchasing power to reduce APCs and subscription costs
- Subject and institutional repositories to play a complementary role providing access
to research data and grey literature
- Universities, funders etc should continue to experiment in open access publishing of scholarly monographs
- Review the position of learned societies that rely on publishing revenues to fund their core activities
- Consider extending access licences for public, business and voluntary sector bodies
- Pursue the proposal to implement walk-in access to the majority of journals in public libraries
PRESS RELEASE
(OpenAIRE)
Large-scale deposit in repositories increases access and use
- OpenAIRE, a European initiative co-funded by the European Commission (EC)
- Welcomes results of the PEER Project (Publishing and Ecology of European Research)
- Collaboration between the publishing, library and research communities
- Studying the effects of large-scale, systematic deposit in repositories of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts
- Findings show that large-scale deposit results in increased access and use, including via publisher websites
- No evidence that self-archiving affects journal viability
May
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
(Times Higher Education)
European Commission backing for open access
- 80 billion € budget for Horizon 2020 European Union's new programme for research and innovation
- Researchers receiving funding between 2014 and 2020 will be expected to publish their findings open access
- Director General of Research and Innovation at the Commission:
Free online access is essential to driving free movement of researchers and ideas within Europe
- Pilot studies underway and discussions being held with publishers
- Policy expected before summer 2012
- Welcome news for Universities Minister David Willetts who in a recent speech said:
The UK could lose out financially if it were alone in promoting open access
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
(Times Higher Education)
Elsevier journal editor resigns
- Genomics editor
- Winston Hide Associate Professor in Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health
- Claims that Elsevier: Is denying developing countries access to research findings
SPEECH
(UK Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts to Publishers Association)
Public access to public research
- Move to open access presents a challenge and opportunity for publishing industry
- UK journals important export industry, about 80% of revenues come from sales abroad
- Funding model surely going to have to change
- Requires international co-ordination to avoid giving UK research articles to world for free, whilst paying for foreign journals and research carried out abroad
- No decisions will be taken until Dame Janet Finch report published
- Representatives of European Commission coming soon to Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to discuss open access
- Government also wants researchers to be able to use datasets without undue costs or obstacles - and without undermining research publishing.
- Research Councils investing £ million in a UK Gateway to Research portal set to open next year
- Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to advise on standards to help ensure that the portal promotes collaboration
- Open access could be among the excellence criteria for qualifying articles in future Research Excellence Frameworks (REF)
April
ANNOUNCEMENT
(Harvard University)
Memorandum to Faculty
- Major periodical subscriptions cannot be sustained
- 145% price increase over past 6 years by 2 publishers
- Costs also impacting on other areas of the Library collection
- Faculty members asked to consider:
- Depositing research in Harvard's repository
- Publishing in OA journals: Move prestige to open access
- If journal editor, determine if journal could become OA, if not consider resigning
- Encourage scholarly associations to take control of literature in their field
STATEMENT
(ALLEA | ALL European Academies)
Open Science for the 21st Century
- Open access to scientific information will strengthen Europe's competitiveness
- Academies pledge themselves to adopt an Open Science approach:
- Sharing publications, data, software and educational resources
- Sharing rewarded
- Interoperable e-infrastructures available to all scientists
- Challenges
- High journal subscription costs
- Volume of data now being created
- Complexity of curating and preserving research outputs
- Noted that new digital technologies could also widen the 'digital divide'
March
POLICY
(Research Councils UK - RCUK)
UK Research Councils considering strengthening their current open access policies
- Research Councils UK (RCUK) draft policy clarifying what the Councils mean by open access
- Aim is to further enhance access to outputs resulting from research which they wholly or partly fund
- Grant holders will still choose how to make their work open access
- Policy is expected to be adopted in summer 2012
- View summary of main proposals
2011
December
REPORT
(UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills)
Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth
- Research Councils asked to ensure researchers they fund fulfil current open access requirements
- Councils investing £2 million in the development of a UK Gateway to Research by 2013
October
WORKING GROUP
(Dame Janet Finch Chair)
Expanding access to published research findings
- Independent group examining how UK-funded research findings can be made more accessible
- Includes representatives of HE sector, research funders, research community, scholarly publishers and libraries
- Report expected Spring 2012 will contain programme of action and recommendations to government, research funders and publishers
- Group will take into account parallel work relating to research data and other outputs being conducted by the Royal Society
August
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
(Guardian)
Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist
- George Monbiot's article put the media spotlight on scholarly publishers' practices
- Charging between $30 and $42 to read a single journal article
- Compared with £1 to access and download unlimited articles from the Times/Sunday Times during a 24 hour period
- Deutsche Bank study calculated publishers' profit margins of 40%
- Despite getting content, peer-review and editing services for free
- Libraries hit by 'cosmic' fees prompting cancellation of journal subscriptions and reduced book purchases
- Irony of tax-payers having to buy-back the results of tax-payer funded research
- Yet, OA publishing failing to displace monopolistic publishers
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