"Bravo UK!" was open access evangelist's Stevan Harnad's response
to the
news in a blog entry of June 28. While the immediate response to the
updated position may have been to assume that the publishing lobby had
'got' to the RCUK, the University of Southampton professor
explained to
EPS that the fact that three of the councils had decided to mandate
self-archiving - and a fourth seems very close to mandating - as a
condition of funding meant the UK led the world when it came to OA.
Of the three, only the Medical Research Council (MRC) statement has no
caveats when it comes to respecting the wishes of publishers. The
Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBRC) and the
Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC) have instead stated that archiving
in an
open access repository is a requirement of grant holders from
October 1
this year, but publishers' copyright and embargo periods should be
"respected by authors". The MRC on the other hand has said that if an
author wishes to submit output to a journal that does not allow
self-archiving within six months then funding will only be given in
"very
exceptional cases". A fourth, the Council for the Central
Laboratory of
the Research Councils "strongly encourages researchers to deposit
research
outputs . in appropriate open access repositories", though there is
some
hope among OA supporters that this council will change its position
to a
stronger one in the near future.
There is no doubt that the 2006 RCUK statement is some way from the
direction it appeared to be going in 2005. The question of what the
effect on publishing will be remains. Organisations like the ALPSP
claim
that OA will hurt learned societies the most and that it is an
unproven
business model, while the OA enthusiasts point out that the number of
subscriptions taken out by libraries has grown along with the
growth of
OA. This has lead to the commissioning of studies into the effects of
OA - ones by the publisher's lobby demonstrating it is an unproven
business model (e.g. the 2005 report from ALPSP) and ones from the OA
advocates showing the increase in impact factor of journals that
have been
openly archived. In this respect, RCUK has bent more to the side
of the
publishers, commissioning another study into the effects of OA that
is due
for completion in 2008. Harnad in particular has dismissed this as
further "filibustering" as it is impossible to "armchair guess"
what the
effects of OA publishing will be without actually going ahead with
it. In
addition, STM journal publishing is a global endeavour of which the
UK is
only a constituent part....
Comment. All the talk about "untested business models" for OA journals is beside the point, since the RCUK policy is entirely about OA archiving, not OA journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/13/2006 08:44:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
