UK Government goes for broke on open access | Impact of Social Sciences

“Less than a month after the Finch working group published its recommendations on the future of open access, UK science minister David Willetts has responded ...  The government has taken essentially all of the recommendations on board and has committed the country to making all its publicly-funded research available for free online by 2014... There are weak points in the government’s response, but in other areas the policy implementation has actually gone beyond what Finch recommended. Let me deal with the weaknesses first.  The point-by-point response (4-page PDF) by David Willetts to the ten recommendations... makes it clear that there will be no new money to lubricate the transition to open access. As a result, the implementation of several of the recommendations remains decidedly aspirational. It is yet to be seen how the health sector or businesses will secure access to the research literature, how university libraries will negotiate with publishers to ensure that subscription prices reflect the increase in open access content, or how scholarly monographs will be paid for... These matters are now left for the relevant institutions and stakeholders to figure out — but with no timescale for resolution imposed.  On the plus side, the proposals that relate most directly to the work of publicly-funded researchers are laid out much more clearly because they have already incorporated into the new open access policy of Research Councils UK (RCUK), which was also timed for release on the same day. The policy appears to have retained all the muscle that was evident in a draft document ...  It’s a strong statement that surpasses the Finch recommendations... The document makes it clear that a compliant journal is one that permits either immediate free access to readers on payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC) (gold OA) or, if that option is not made available by the publisher, allows the author to deposit their final peer-reviewed version in a repository (green OA) no more than 6 months after publication (12 months for AHRC and ESRC funded work in the humanities, economics and social sciences)... if an APC is paid, the article must be accorded a CC-BY Creative Commons licence ... If no APC is paid, the deposited copy must still be made available ‘without restrictions on non-commercial re-use...’ both routes to open access must allow ‘unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools’, a condition that will facilitate deeper and broader analyses of the research literature...  places an obligation on authors to ensure that the data that their conclusions are based on are also made available and should be clearly sign-posted within the paper.  What about the money, and the vexed issue of costs...  The good thing... is that the Research Councils have finally adopted a flexible model for funding of publications that is similar to the one adopted by the Wellcome Trust. What will now happen is that money for publication costs ... will be paid as a block grant to the host institution, which will be required to establish a open access fund... but what isn’t yet clear is exactly how these awards will be calculated. I imagine there is some concern among universities as to whether the Research Councils will get their sums right.   Nevertheless establishment of such funds ... also creates a possible mechanism for the transfer of journal subscription funds, currently provided via HEFCE, as the publication model shifts from subscriptions to APC-supported open access... It is important to see today’s announcement not as an end-point but as a beginning. If we, the community that generates and reviews the research literature, want a publication system that is accessible and effective and that represents good value for money, we have to agitate for it (and the attendant culture change, part of which will involve