EPT response to the UK Finch Report

The recent publication of the Finch Report ... was eagerly anticipated by the scholarly community in the developed world (henceforth referred to as the North)... The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (http://www.epublishingtrust.net) has worked for over a decade to facilitate both access to the world’s published literature for economically constrained regions of the world (henceforth referred to as the South) and the publication and global distribution of often unique research arising from research in these regions. The Trust provides a different perspective in considering the recommendations of the Finch Report ...The first thing to note is that this is a UK government commissioned report and so is concerned in the main with the impact of OA on UK research output and national wealth. Therefore, while it had no remit to consider the consequences of the recommendations on the rest of the world, as a leading research nation it will have consequences, and the EPT wishes to consider these and transmit its views to its fellow- researchers in the South. The second thing to note is that whereas the Report refers frequently to the importance of UK research and also acknowledges that research is an international activity, it does not recognise the crucial impact that the research carried out in the South has on the development of international programmes. Many of the world’s most intractable problems are felt primarily in the developing regions and local research, for example on malaria, animal health, agriculture or climate change, is critical to providing appropriate solutions. Without this knowledge, inappropriate recommendations have been made ... and the problems persist and even, in the case of infectious diseases, spread. It is therefore important to all that research from the South is supported and well distributed globally. This has been the mission of the EPT... When the concept of OA was first proposed the consequences of this policy for the progress and success of the work of researchers in the South was almost unbelievable... it took time for it to be believed and over recent years much effort has gone into awareness-raising and training in the new technologies which support such access. The first developments towards free access were tempered with disappointment when the ‘author pays’ strategy was proposed and adopted by some journals... However, the less publicised strategy of Green OA was slowly recognised, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of knowledgeable people in the countries affected... The situation is that there are now nearly 700 institutional repositories in the South (source: Registry of OA Repositories – http://roar.eprints.org/), rising to 804 repositories if China and Russia are included, collectively holding vast numbers of research articles. Progress has been frustratingly slow... and it is the acceptance by prestigious organisations in the North (NIH, UKRC, Wellcome Trust, UNESCO etc) that is now beginning to give the confidence that administrators needed in order to commit to the switch in policy. It is for this reason that the recommendations of the Finch report are important in the South... it is profoundly disappointing that Green OA has been designated as merely a fringe resource for all manner of writings. It is difficult not to sound unprofessional and populist when describing the huge imbalance between the importance of sharing essential research and that of retaining the profits of the publishing service industry, but publishing exists to support research, not the other way round...”