Researchers ‘should be given leeway’ on open access | News | Times Higher Education

UK researchers should be permitted to publish in top international journals even if those journals are not compliant with open-access mandates.  This is the view of John Neilson, college secretary and registrar at Imperial College London.  He told Westminster Higher Education Forum’s Implementing Open Access Policy conference on 5 November that although the progress made in the UK on open access was worthy of celebration, open access must not be attained at the expense of research excellence.

'We are not going to stop the best researchers wanting to publish in the world’s leading journals and we shouldn’t, so if these international journals don’t quite conform to the UK’s particular policies on the availability of gold or green options there mustn’t be any kind of sanctions from [the funders]. We mustn’t descend to saying you have to publish in second-rate journals that do comply,' he said.  He also urged the government to carry out as soon as possible a full cost-benefit analysis on open-access policy so the document can inform the funding councils’ open access mandate for the 2020 research excellence framework, which is currently out for consultation.  He noted that the government had pledged to carry out such an analysis in its response to February’s report on open access by the Lords Science and Technology Committee which criticised the fact that it had not done so before announcing its policy.  The Lords’ call was repeated in a report on open access by the Commons Science and Technology committee, published in September ..."