[BOAI] Opening up research for better returns on taxpayers' investment

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from JISC.  --Peter Suber.]


Opening up research for better returns on taxpayers’ investment

As part of International Open Access Week 
(October 19 – 23, 2009) JISC is today launching a 
definitive 
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess>guide to its 15 
years of work in Open Access, tracking the 
changes in UK policy, opinions and what the future will look like.

The guide has been created to showcase the work 
JISC has achieved for scholarly communications in 
the UK and is supported by electronic resources 
including interviews with experts from across 
education and research. This suite of information 
is being launched to support UK researchers in 
opening up their work for better returns on taxpayers’ investment.

The increased impact of wider access to academic 
research papers could be worth approximately £170 
million per year to the UK economy.  Work funded 
by JISC in UK colleges and universities includes 
cost-benefit analysis and case studies showing 
why and how universities can support a transition 
to open access for research outputs and an 
investigation into the feasibility of a national 
purchasing scheme for Open Access publication charges.

Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary, JISC says, 
“It is clear that the choices research 
organisations and individual researchers make in 
deciding how research should be published can 
have an impact upon the value to society of 
taxpayer-funded research.  Although JISC has 
achieved a great deal in promoting the Open 
Access debate earnestly and consistently over the 
past 12 -15 years, we still have more to do to 
engage the research community and practitioners more effectively.”

JISC will also be looking at the challenges 
facing academic librarians to support researchers 
in sharing  their research papers through 
repositories, working with Open Access and 
traditional model publishers, as well as 
researchers themselves in terms of what they need 
and desire to promote their work.

Neil Jacobs, programme manager, for JISC’s Open 
Access work says, “Open Access is absolutely 
crucial right now and it's crucial because it 
both makes the scholarly communications process 
more efficient and because it allows publicly 
funded research in the UK to have a lot more impact.

“We've shown by the research that we've funded 
that the efficiency savings are really quite 
significant compared with the way scholarly 
communications and research papers are 
disseminated now. But perhaps more importantly 
than that, if we're going to get out of 
recession, it will based on innovation, it's 
going to be based on the private sector having 
access to the outputs from the public science 
base and being able to use that to innovate.

“There was a report recently 
<http://www.publishingresearch.net/SMEaccess.htm>commissioned 
that showed that most small and medium sized 
enterprises have difficulty getting hold of 
research papers and they consider these research 
papers as really important sources of information 
for their work. Clearly, if this material is 
available openly on the web, those small and 
medium sized enterprises will have access to it 
and be in a much better position to compete.”

Over the coming months JISC will be running an 
investigation into the feasibility of a national 
scheme for Open Access publication charges.

Open Access Week is being led by 
<http://www.arl.org/sparc/>SPARC, the Scholarly 
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, 
which is an international alliance of academic 
and research libraries working to correct 
imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.

Read about JISC’s 
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess>work on Open 
Access and find out more about the first 
International Open Access Week at www.openaccessweek.org

----------

Notes to editors:
Examples of Open Access week activities taking 
place in other countries include:

•             47 institutions in 14 German 
Federal States will run local events for their researchers and
               students
•             Italian librarians have produced 
videos to show authors how to deposit their work in an
                open access repository
•             The European Commission is 
including an Open Access session as part of the European
                Research Area Conference to be 
held in Brussels during Open Access Week
•             University of California Irvine is 
running a seminar on ‘Open Access: the Status and Success
                with Different Disciplines’

JISC inspires colleges and universities in the 
innovative use of digital technologies helping to 
maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in 
education. JISC receives funding from all the UK 
further and higher education funding councils. 
For further information visit the JISC 
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo.aspx>website or 
for media enquiries contact a member of JISC’s 
press office at 
<mailto:press at jisc.ac.uk>press at jisc.ac.uk or  call telephone 0117 3310657.


Sophie Pettit | Public Relations

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