[GOAL] BOAI-10: Interview with SPARC's Alma Swan

[Richard Poynder]

Although the history of the Open Access movement can be traced back to at
least 1994 (or even earlier), its birth is widely held to have taken place
at the 2001 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Certainly, it was at
this point that the term "open access" was first used.
 
The BOAI emerged from a meeting held in Budapest that had been organised by
George Soros' then named Open Society Institute (OSI). The OSI also
kick-started the movement with a grant of $3 million.
 
OSI's involvement has allowed a great deal to be achieved over the last ten
years. However, much remains to be done. So in February this year OSI - now
known as the Open Society Foundations (OSF) - organised a second Budapest
meeting (BOAI-10).
 
Here a "diverse coalition" of OA publishers, funders, librarians, scholarly
societies, infrastructure managers, advocates and strategists reaffirmed and
refreshed the BOAI, and subsequently drew up 28 recommendations "to make
research freely available to all online". These recommendations were finally
published on Wednesday.
 
It is worth noting that a great deal has happened in the OA space this year.
We have seen the rise and fall of the infamous Research Works Act (RWA). We
have witnessed the so-called Academic Spring - which included a boycott by
researchers of Elsevier, the world's largest subscription publisher. We have
seen a US petition in favour of OA attract more than 25,000 signatures. And
we have seen the publication of the Finch Report in the UK, followed by the
announcement of a new OA policy from Research Councils UK (RCUK). Finally,
the European Commission has made a new commitment to "improve access to
scientific information produced in Europe."
 
However, this is not all good news. The Finch Report and the RCUK OA policy
in particular have proved highly controversial, with OA critics expressing
great concern that they will prove counter-productive, and could "set
worldwide open access back by at least a decade".
 
One intriguing question that arises from the policy errors of Finch/RCUK is
whether they might have been avoided had the BOAI-10 recommendations been
published earlier in the year. After all, as OA advocate Stevan Harnad
points out, RCUK's policy is in direct contradiction with these
recommendations.
 
We might also wonder whether, in the wake of Finch/RCUK, OA advocates can
any longer maintain that OA will resolve the affordability problem that led
many to join the OA movement in the first place.
 
BOAI-10 was chaired by Alma Swan, the director of European advocacy for
SPARC. This week I published an email interview with Swan about the meeting
and the recommendations - a discussion that inevitably raised the above
questions in my mind.
 
Swan argues that OA can be cheaper, so long as it is "properly supported by
sensible policy". She adds, "[t]he cheapest transition to OA for the UK is
through a primarily green route, and several studies have confirmed that."
 
This, of course, goes to the heart of the concerns about Finch and the RCUK
policy, since both maintain that gold OA should become the main vehicle for
scholarly publishing in future, and both relegate green OA self-archiving to
a bit player.
 
As a result, some argue, OA can no longer be expected to lower costs, but
rather to increase them. By how much will it increase them? Harnad predicts
that the UK research community's publishing costs will likely rise by 6% as
a result of the RCUK policy.
 
We can but hope that the publication of the BOAI-10 recommendations will
refocus policy-makers' minds on the affordability issue, and that RCUK will
rethink its erroneous policy as a result.
 
A Q&A interview with Swan can be read here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/budapest-open-access-initiative.html