Open Access in the UK – will Gold or Green prevail? | Exchanges

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-10-08

Summary:

"A lot has happened in the 15 or so months since the Finch Group, an independent group of stakeholders set up by BIS (the UK Department of Business Innovation and Skills), published its report on how research findings could be made more accessible, in June 2012.   The report recommended Gold OA with CC-BY licences as the ultimate goal, but assumed a mixed economy ( OA and subscription/license based journals) for the foreseeable future. It also made it clear that the transition to Gold OA would require extra funding for APCs (Article Publication Charges). The Finch Group also suggested that wider access could be provided via public libraries in the UK. The RCUK subsequently adopted the Finch recommendations and announced a schedule of grants to universities to meet some of the costs of APCs. However, there were some concerns over the RCUK’s implementation of its OA policy and, in early 2013, these were examined by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. The Government’s response (May 2013) acknowledged the importance of supporting learned societies during the transition, and required RCUK to use clearer language to describe the embargo periods, aided by the UK Publishers’ Association (PA) ‘decision tree’, which indicates embargoes of up to 12 months (STM) or 24 months (HSS) for the Green OA option if there are no funds for the APC. Progress has been rapid. A survey conducted by the PA shows that, overall, 96% of UK journals now have embargo periods of 24 months or less; of those, 64% had an embargo period of 12 months or less. 70% of journals are fully Gold or include a Gold OA option (Wiley’s OnlineOpen); and 82% of these allow the author to choose a CC-BY licence. A two-month technical trial of the Public Library Initiative permitting ‘walk-in’ free access to content in 10 library authorities is now underway, and a two-year nationwide trial begins in December. However, in early September the House of Commons BIS Committee (BISCOM) produced  a report on Open Access criticizing the Finch Report and, in particular, the recommendation to fund the transition to Gold OA.  The BISCOM report suggested that the Finch Group had not examined all the evidence, particularly when determining the cost of transition to Gold OA. It even suggested that Finch had compromised its independence by relying on BIS for economic advice. This despite the fact that the Finch Group report clearly states that an analysis from the Cambridge Economic Policy Associates was commissioned, and that this was a development from earlier studies undertaken for a range of stakeholders. A significant oversight was the omission of any consideration of the position of learned societies, in marked contrast to the Finch Report, the House of Lords Select Committee’s report and the Government’s responses ... The two outstanding issues in Gold OA are transparency and so-called ‘double dipping’.  On the topic of transparency, BISCOM suggested that non-disclosure clauses in library and consortia contracts severely limit the negotiating power of universities over subscriptions. It made a blanket statement that the UK Government does not support non-disclosure agreements when public funds are involved. However, to quote Richard Mollet of the PA, ‘Having full transparency of how public money is spent, as advocated by the Cabinet Office, is one thing, but forcing private companies dealing with the public sector to declare the value of their contracts is quite another.  Universities actually benefit from non-disclosure agreements as it allows variation in pricing.' Obviously the RCUK needs to track its spend on journals (subscriptions and APCs) to monitor the implementation of its policy, and the universities should be able to provide this information, but publishers may be able to help by providing information on an anonymous basis.  In terms of double dipping – the concern that publishers are collecting subscriptions and APCs for the same content – there is now some acceptance that this is not happening on a global scale, i.e. the APC revenue is taken into account when determining the subscription price.  But funders are demanding new pricing models to deal with the issue at the institutional level (universities are complaining that they cannot afford to pay several APCs to a journal along with the subscription). We believe they are conflating paying for a subscription to provide access by the university to the whole journal, with paying  an APC to provide  free access by the world to one article ..."

Link:

http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2013/10/07/open-access-in-the-uk-will-gold-or-green-prevail/

From feeds:

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

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.licensing oa.comment oa.government oa.mandates oa.copyright oa.uk oa.reports oa.funders oa.fees oa.rcuk oa.bis oa.ccc oa.libre oa.policies oa.journals oa.green oa.repositories oa.predictions

Date tagged:

10/08/2013, 19:57

Date published:

10/08/2013, 15:57