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<strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">BMJ Open Press Release<br>
Embargo: 00:01 hours (UK time) Thursday 24 October 2013</span></span></strong></p>
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<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Please click on links for full text of papers and contact authors directly for comment.<br>
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<span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Following
continuing misattribution of BMJ Open stories to The BMJ, please note
that BMJ Open is the full and only title for this separate publication
and should always be cited as such.</span></span></strong></span></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">BMJ OPEN</span></span></strong></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Large medical research funders committed to open access publishing</span></span></strong></p>
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<em><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">But smaller medical charities, although keen, fear impact on budgets and funded researchers</span></span></em></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">[Publishing priorities of biomedical research funders doi 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004171]</span></span></strong><br>
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<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Large
medical research funding bodies are fully committed to open access
publishing. But although smaller charitable funders back the principle,
they worry about the impact open access will have on their budgets and
their funded researchers, reveals a qualitative study published in the
online journal <strong>BMJ Open</strong>.<br>
<br>
The findings come as Open Access Week (October 21-27), a global
annual event to promote open access as the norm in scholarly publishing
and research, celebrates its seventh year in business.<br>
<br>
The premise of open access is that it provides free, immediate,
online access to the results of scholarly research, and ideally, the
right to use and reuse those results as desired, rather than restricting
access behind a subscription pay wall. The UK leads the world on open
access.<br>
<br>
Semi-structured interviews about open access policies and preferences
were carried out with 12 employees at 10 UK biomedical research funding
bodies in the Spring of this year in the public, charitable, and
commercial sectors.<br>
<br>
The results showed that all three sectors back open access, but that
while public and charitable funders have clear policies on it,
commercial sector funders don’t tend to.<br>
<br>
Most funders are happy to support the “gold” route, whereby a study’s
publication is paid for out of a research grant to cover the journal’s
costs. This is the model used by BMJ Open and the other open access
titles published by BMJ.<br>
<br>
But funders said that not all publishers have embraced open access;
many are resisting it and are either reluctant to move away from
traditional publishing or are using it purely as a means to boost
income.<br>
<br>
Open access also seemed to be part of a funder’s overall mission -
that is, improving health, healthcare, patient outcomes, and patients’
lives - although for many of the charitable funders, this had to be
balanced against other types of public communication and support for
people living with medical conditions.<br>
<br>
But the way in which a funder gets its income influences its attitude
to open access. Charities, which rely on public donations, had to be
able to justify their costs and make the best use of available cash for
all their competing objectives.<br>
<br>
But research funders across the board were worried about the
escalating costs of open access as the gold route becomes more
mainstream and the cost of publishing shifts from institutions to
funders.</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">This
is of particular concern to the smaller charitable funders, who have
historically not covered off these costs in their overheads, and fear
they will need to stump up the additional costs required.<br>
<br>
Other key findings:<br>
• Funders find it hard to monitor compliance with open access, as a condition of funding; compliance rates vary enormously.<br>
• Sanctions for breaching funding conditions are not harsh in the
belief that it is more important to encourage researchers to comply
rather than to punish them when they don’t.<br>
• Research funders are turning their attention to other priorities
for publication, including data sharing, research protocols, and
negative results, which are not always favoured by more traditional
outlets.</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Sharmila
Nebhrajani, Chief Executive of the Association of Medical Research
Charities commented: "The public choose to donate to medical research
charities to fund research into new treatments and cures, and they want
their money to make a difference. To [do this], charities want everyone
to be able to learn from their research findings, which is why they
support the principle of open access.”</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">But
this involved upfront costs, which were not always easy for charities
to justify because of competing funding needs, she said.</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“To
make the biggest difference for their patients and supporters, funding
open access may not be the best decision for all charities right now. We
need to create an environment where it can be,” she said.</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“This
means prices that are clear and competitive so that charities can get
the best deal and show how they are investing their donations to make a
difference," she explained.</span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><strong>Contact:</strong><br>
Ellen Collins, Research Information Network, London, UK<br>
Tel: + 44 (0)20 3397 3648<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:ellen.collins@researchinfonet.org">ellen.collins@researchinfonet.org</a></span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Embargoed link to paper:</span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> <a target="_blank" href="http://press.psprings.co.uk/Open/october/bmjopen004171.pdf">http://press.psprings.co.uk/Open/october/bmjopen004171.pdf</a></span></span><br>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Public link to paper once embargo lifts: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bmjopen.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004171">http://www.bmjopen.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004171</a><br>
Click here to listen to an accompanying podcast with the author: <u><a href="http://snd.sc/18OUjc8" target="_blank">http://snd.sc/18OUjc8</a></u></span></span></p>
<p>
<span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><strong>Notes for editors:</strong><br>
BMJ Open is BMJ’s (formerly BMJ Group) first online general medical
journal dedicated solely to publishing open access research. All its
research, supplementary files, and peer reviewers' reports are fully and
openly available online, along with an increasing number of linked raw
data sets in the Dryad repository (<a href="http://datadryad.org">datadryad.org</a>). <a href="http://www.bmjopen.bmj.com">www.bmjopen.bmj.com</a></span></span></p>
<p>
<strong><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Embargo: 00:01 hours (UK time) Thursday 24 October 2013</span></span></strong></p><div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-weight:bold">Emma Dickinson</span><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">PR Manager</span><br><img src="http://resources.bmj.com/repository/images/BMJ_Logo_email_signature.png"><br>
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