Small firms lack resources to make most of open access | News | Times Higher Education

"Achieving the UK government’s goal of full open access to publicly funded research would not have the transformative effect on small business that ministers hope for, a representative of the world’s largest journal publisher has said. David Mullen, Elsevier’s regional sales director of corporate markets in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, said that small companies lacked time to wade through journals and needed help to find the 'nugget' of information they needed. His remarks came in the wake of criticism of the restrictive usage terms of the scheme for free access to academic journals at public libraries launched by publishers earlier this month, known as Access to Research. In the press release for the launch of the scheme, David Willetts, the universities and science minister, said that the scheme would 'connect people, including students and small businesses, to a wealth of global knowledge – maximising its impact and value'. Mr Willetts’ push for full open access, and his preference for open licences that permit commercial reuse, is partly driven by a hope that it will improve the capacity of small UK businesses to innovate and contribute to a knowledge economy. However, the terms of use of the scheme expressly forbid the use of papers accessed through it for 'commercial research'. Asked by Times Higher Education about the discrepancy, Mr Willetts said that he had confused the scheme with the Gateway to Research portal launched by Research Councils UK before Christmas, which is aimed at providing businesses with information about research council-funded projects. Meanwhile, Mr Mullen said that a pilot project Elsevier had carried out in the Netherlands several years ago, in which it opened its entire journal content to about a dozen small technology companies, had made little impact ..."