[GOAL] Fred Friend on UK Government and RCUK open access policies

[Stevan Harnad]

** Forwarded and Cross-Posted **

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frederick Friend <ucylfjf at ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:37 AM
Subject: UK Government and RCUK open access policies
To: JISC-REPOSITORIES at jiscmail.ac.uk


  * “BETTER ACCESS TO BRITISH SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PAPERS BY
2014”?*

The UK Government’s aim of “better access to British scientific research
and academic papers by 2014” (as stated in the BIS press release of 16 July
2012) is to be welcomed. The problem with the Government’s policy lies in
the strategy for the achievement of the aim. The points below suggest
fundamental flaws in the Government’s strategy, flaws which threaten the
success of the policy and could set the UK on a slow and expensive route to
open access for many years beyond 2014. The Forum held at Imperial College
on 27 September 2012 was very valuable in highlighting the issues but the
response from RCUK did nothing to dispel the following concerns about the
Government and RCUK policies.

·         The Government policy rules out any addition to the open access
pool of the UK’s current research outputs through deposit in institutional
repositories. Even if the policy of payment to publishers for open access
to journal articles works smoothly, no single route to open access has been
100% successful in the past. Not to use the opportunity of adding to UK
open access content through repositories at a lower cost is a perverse
decision.

·         The possibility in the new RCUK policy for authors to deposit the
final version of their work in a repository without payment to a publisher
is so qualified as to be meaningless in practice. The deposit only becomes
possible when the article is published in those journals unable to offer an
open access option through payment of an “author publication charge”. Most
publishers are unlikely to miss the opportunity to gain additional income
and will offer a paid open access option.

·         Unusually for important policy statements, neither the UK
Government policy statement of 16 July 2012 nor the RCUK open access policy
provide any rationale or evidence for the choice of open access journals as
the sole (in the case of the Government, preferred in the case of RCUK)
route for access to current published research outputs. The rationale
outlined by the Government for open access itself is valid but no case is
made for the open access model chosen.

·         No mechanism has been set up by the UK Government to ensure that
the taxpayer receives value for money. The administration of the payment to
publishers for open access is to be left to the UK Research Councils and
the university institutions through block payments, reducing the funds
available for new research programmes. The payments to publishers for open
access to individual articles will not be capped and therefore no
prediction can be made about the number of articles to be made open access.

·         Competition between open access publishers has the potential to
reduce the cost of publishing in OA journals but will not be effective
while RCUK leaves the management of funds to institutions without involving
authors. The separation of authors from the cost of library subscriptions
is one factor in the high cost of journal subscriptions and this situation
will be replicated in the cost of open access publishing.

·         Universities will have to decide what happens to the
dissemination of RC-funded research results once the block grant has been
used up. Will universities be expected to fund APCs from their Funding
Council income in that situation? University repositories have been used by
universities as records of publications from their researchers but will
that infrastructure fall into disuse as a result of the move to open access
journals as the sole or preferred dissemination route?

·         The Finch Report identified a role for repositories as “a
mechanism for enhancing the links between publications and associated
research data” but created difficulties for researchers in using such links
by allocating the publication role to OA journals. Seamless re-use of text
and data requires both to be accessible through the same host.

The success of the UK Government’s policy and the cost to the taxpayer will
always be at risk until the issues identified above have been resolved.
Will this Government be remembered for its wisdom in supporting open access
for publicly-funded research outputs or for its failure to implement open
access within a sustainable and cost-effective infrastructure?

Fred Friend

Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
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