Open Access News

The executive summary breaks the results into Publishers' views, Authors' views, and the future. From the publishers' views:

• By publicly endorsing the open access publishing activities being undertaken by the participating publishers, the JISC’s funding initiative provided valuable impetus to these endeavours.
• The JISC’s involvement had the effect of raising awareness of open access publishing among the UK author community through the promotional activities of publishers.
• The funding lent a degree of short-term financial stability to open access publishing projects, giving publishers breathing space to focus on refining operational processes.
• The funding provided a timely opportunity for publishers to develop and experiment with different economic models.
• The only negative effect reported is that the funding has, for the time being, insulated UK authors from the cost of publishing in open access form.
• The impact of the funding on publishing performance is perceived to have been generally positive.
• Although the present funding initiative is due to end this year, all the participating publishers remain committed to their open access publishing projects, though there is some uncertainty as to whether UK authors will be prepared or able to find funds to pay the open access publishing charges.

From the authors' views:

• A survey collected the views of 124 authors who have benefited from fee waivers or discounts under the JISC’s open access funding initiative.
• The top five reasons for choosing to publish in particular journals are: prestige; principle of free access for all readers; impact factor; citations; size of readership. Two of these reasons are directly linked to publishing in open access form.
• The decision by 38% of authors to publish in one of the funded journals was positively influenced by the JISC’s funding initiative.
• 23% of authors would not have published in one of the funded journals had it not been for the fee waiver or discount.
• 78% of authors said that given their experience of publishing in one or more of the funded journals they are more likely to publish in open access form again.
• Authors do relatively little themselves to disseminate their open access papers.
• Authors are influenced by the monetary level of publishers open access fees; this may be the basis for the development of a new form of inter-publisher competition for the best authors and papers.
• 48% of authors think open access fees should be paid by Government agencies and 42% says money should be found from research grants.

From the section on the future:

• On the basis of the evidence presented in this report the JISC’s open access funding initiative is shown to have been successful on a variety of counts. Publishers and authors have moved forward in their understanding of open access publishing.
• Any future iteration of the funding initiative may benefit from a degree of fine tuning to account for the progress that has been made since the initiative was conceived.
• Ideas for such fine tuning include: transitional funding that exposes authors to a proportion of publishers’ open access publishing charges; assigning a portion of each grant to enable publishers to identify, analyse and report the quantitative impact of the funding; a requirement for authors to deposit a copy of their postprints in an appropriate repository to align the outcome of the funding with the JISC’s investment in the repository aspect of its Information Environment.

Update. See JISC's press release on the report, May 16, 2006. Excerpt:

JISC’s open access funding initiative - which provided £384,500 over three years to publishers to explore open access models of publishing for their journals - has given “valuable impetus” to thinking around open access and “has had the effect of raising awareness among the UK author community,” says a report published today. Provided as “seed money” to publishers to experiment with alternative publishing models, the funding has, says the report, provided publishers with “a timely opportunity to develop and experiment” with open access publishing, with all participating publishers remaining committed to their open access projects after funding has ceased.

Authors too have found the experience positive...The results show that not only was the JISC funding influential in encouraging authors to publish in this way, but that 78% of them were likely to choose to publish in an open access form again.

The findings corroborate earlier studies which show that authors respond positively to publishing in open access journals, valuing the principle of free access to all readers and the consequent wider readership that open access enables. These, says the current study, are two of the five main factors influencing authors’ publishing decisions, the others being prestige, impact factor and citations. The initiative has, the report concludes, provided “a catalyst for change in authors’ perceptions and behaviour in relation to publishing in an open access form.”...