BMJ Group blogs: BMJ » Blog Archive » Ellen Collins on funder priorities for open access

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-10-25

Summary:

" ... Medical research funders are a diverse group, ranging from government bodies to pharmaceutical companies, and including charities with annual research budgets from somewhere in the low thousands of pounds to £650 million. Some funders have been longstanding proponents of open access: the Wellcome Trust, for example, and the Medical Research Council. But for others, the government’s focus represents a step into less familiar territory. And, although they don’t all have to follow the government’s policy lead, most of them expect that it’ll affect researcher expectations. So they can’t afford to ignore open access. The BMJ commissioned my organisation, the Research Information Network, to undertake a small qualitative study on funder priorities for open access, now and over the next 12-18 months. It involves ten research funders, each engaged to a different extent with open access, and it provides a snapshot of public, charity, and commercial funders and their attitudes towards open access publishing. First, we should be clear that all the funders we spoke to support the principles of open access ... Another important priority for funders, across the board, is information. They want to see a transparent market develop in APCs, the fees paid by authors (or, more usually, their funders) to underwrite a publisher’s costs. Not all of them are convinced that publishers will supply this information without some intervention. They also want to track how their money is being spent, and to understand usage of open access content: they think that this should help them to build a case for open access within their own organisations where that is necessary ... Funders recognise that the changes in policy are confusing for their researchers, and want to make their lives as easy as possible through the transition period. The funders who have had a longstanding commitment to open access are starting to think about more rigorous enforcement of their policies. But those who were less experienced, or had fewer resources to back up their open access policies, were not yet ready to punish researchers for non-compliance: that’s not to say they won’t consider such moves in time, though.  Finally, it was clear that open access is getting a lot of attention because of the recent changes in UK policy. But it’s just one of many concerns for funders, who are also thinking about the best ways to share data, protocols, negative findings and results from studies that aren’t clinical trials. All of these carry their own challenges, but could also bring considerable benefits for research. Many funders expect to develop clearer policies around these issues in the next year or two: watch this space!"

Link:

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/10/24/ellen-collins-on-funder-priorities-for-open-access/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.medicine oa.new oa.gold oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.comment oa.mandates oa.uk oa.attitudes oa.reports oa.funders oa.fees oa.wellcome oa.rcuk oa.pharma oa.compliance oa.biomedicine oa.rin oa.policies oa.journals

Date tagged:

10/25/2013, 11:02

Date published:

10/25/2013, 07:02