Open and Shut?: The UK’s Open Access Policy: Controversy Continues

" ... in January this year the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the policy. The subsequent report roundly criticised RCUK for the way it had been implemented, and concluded that lack of clarity about the policy and the guidance offered was ‘unacceptable’. RCUK responded by making a number of 'clarifications', and extended the permissible embargo period before research papers could be made available under Green OA from 6 and 12 months, to 24 months — an extension that led many OA advocates to complain that a bad policy had been made worse.  In the meantime, the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee hadannounced its own inquiry, which at the time of writing remains ongoing. During this inquiry a number of new issues have emerged, including complaints that some publishers are exploiting RCUK’s new policy to pump up their profits (profits that many believe are already unacceptably high). There are concerns, for instance, that the £10m in additional funding that Willetts provided is being used inappropriately. At the centre of these new concerns is Elsevier, the world’s largest scholarly publisher.  When last September Willetts made an additional £10 million available to research intensive universities it was widely assumed that the money had been provided to help them meet the costs arising from the fact that when the new RCUK policy came into effect on April 1st this year their researchers would have to start paying to publish their papers.   This assumption was understandable: When BIS announced the grant it said the money was, 'to kick-start the process of developing policies and setting up funds to meet the costs of article processing charges (APCs).'  In the same press release Willetts was quoted saying, 'This extra £10 million investment will help some of our universities move across to the open access model. This will usher in a new era of academic discovery and keep the UK at the forefront of research to drive innovation and growth.'  Critics argue, however, that at least some of this money is being used to pay for papers that have already been published in subscription journals. Specifically, they cite the fact that on December 20th last year Elsevier approached JISC Collections— the organisation that procures digital content on behalf of UK research institutions — and offered, in effect, to sell back to UK universities the papers that their researchers had published with it during 2012. That is, it offered to make papers that had been published in subscription journals OA retrospectively ... Elsevier’s offer came to light on February 11th in a submission made to the BIS Inquiry by OA advocacy group SPARC Europe. SPARC complained that the £10m was being used in ways that Willetts had not envisaged when he made the money available, since Elsevier’s offer had nothing to do with Open Access. Rather it was being used to buy 'retrospective back-catalogue access.' Moreover, SPARC added, Elsevier had 'already been paid, in the form of subscriptions, for handling these articles'.  Others are similarly concerned. In an email, executive director of Research Libraries UK (RLUK) David Prosser told me that while Elsevier was perfectly within its rights to make such an offer, that fact was that 'the research community worldwide has already paid for these articles to be published through subscription charges.'  He added, 'Any cost, even if at a discount from Elsevier's regular APC charge, would basically represent pure profit for the publisher.'  More importantly, Prosser said, using Willetts’ money in this way will not address the problem it was intended to solve — that is, to help research intensive universities migrate from an environment in which their researchers are able to publish their articles for free, to one in which they will be required to pay to publish. 'The £10 million was meant to help with the transition costs that theFinch Report had identified as we move towards Open Access