Open access plan is no academic spring
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-07-21
Summary:
Use the link to access a series of comments published by The Guardian on July 18, 2012. The comments are written by academics from Canada and the UK in response to the recent announcement of the UK government’s OA policies. The first comment reads as follows: “The UK government is currently making a fundamental choice concerning access to the results of publicly funded research (Free access to British scientific research within two years, 16 July). Everyone agrees that these results should be freely available. So the decision the UK faces is not about whether access to scientific research should be free. Rather, it is about how this should be accomplished. Many argue that the web has made publishers unnecessary, as researchers can disseminate their results themselves. The Finch report, whose recommendations the government accepts, disagrees. It concludes that (i) these intermediaries still perform peer review and the facilitation of access, (ii) this costs them about £2,000 per article and (iii) recommends the adoption of ‘gold’ open access under which academics pay publishers high fees for publishing their articles without paywalls. It rejects the ‘green’ model, which circumvents these intermediaries. In reality, academics perform the peer reviews. Furthermore, the claim that giving publishers the copyright to the work of scientists will facilitate access is dubious at best. Traditionally publishers have limited access and charged for it. Finally, the costs in the report originate from a book written in 2000, relying mainly on data from the 1970s. It seems unfortunate that such an important decision is being taken not after careful data collection and judicious study but rather by an uncritical acceptance of the claims of a self-interested stakeholder backed up by irrelevant research. Professor Bruce Reed, McGill University, Canada”