PhD students urged to sign up to the LERU Statement on Open Access

"Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services is encouraging PhD students to sign up to the League of European Research Universities (LERU) statement on Open Access, arguing that research funding should go to research, not to publishers. The LERU Statement outlines that Open Access to publications is essential and business models of publishers must support this transition. LERU argue it should be one of the principal objectives of Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the Dutch EU Presidency (January-June 2016) to ensure that this transition happens. The Statement highlights a number of challenges, where researchers pay a separate charge to have their publication produced as an Open Access article (an Article Processing Charge, or APC). While their institutional library is paying a subscription for access to the same content. This leads to the danger of double payment to the publishers, once for the subscription and once for Open Access – known technically as double dipping. The Statement makes clear that Christmas is over, since universities and research funders should not be paying twice for the same content ..."