Can open access simplify the embargo process?

“This week University and Science Minister David Willetts announced proposals to subsidise research publication so it is free and accessible to all. This so-called gold open access model has been widely praised and criticised in equal measure. On the one hand, it does remove the paywall surrounding academic research ... On the other hand, however, the money used to subsidise open access publishing – around £50 million – will come directly from the Government’s research budget. That means, of course less money to spend on research but also that taxpayers’ money is being used to fund access to academic work that was paid for by public money. On the face of it the journals don’t stand to lose much at all in this arrangement ... If academics, through their research grants, are paying for the publication of peer reviewed research, that casts the journals much more in the role of service provider. Could this mean that the individual academic is better able to call the shots in terms of when an article is published? As a PR practitioner, my self-interest is evident. We work with academics on a day-to-day basis to publicise their research within the media. Most of them entirely grasp the necessity of knowing precisely with the publication date and time of their paper in an academic journal, so that their press release can be issued under embargo a couple of days in advance. When dealing with journal press offices to discover that precise date and time, however, we frequently run into difficulties. Often the journal is simply unable to tell us when a paper will be published: sometimes they believe an approximate date will suffice, and other times they insist on an approximate date but then publish well in advance of that. The embargo system itself is extremely useful ... It would be useful, though, to see a slight relaxation in the rules from the journals: the open access publisher PloS One, for example, recommends that academics don’t contact or correspond with journalists before a paper has been accepted for publication, and they recommend the embargo system as a way of ensuring accuracy of reporting. But if a journalist does cover a story ahead of publication, this will not jeopardise the chances of that work being considered for publication. Beyond this, however, for papers where publicity is planned, if the academic were able to take a role in negotiating a publication date with the journal publisher, particularly for the earlier online publications, it would be far easier to organise the successful marriage of press release with peer reviewed paper.”