Nottingham University has recently established a fund of £20,000 to help researchers pay open access publishing fees. Although £20,000 doesn't sound like a lot relative to the estimated value of the entire scientific, technical and medical journals market (thought to be around $5billion), the creation of the fund at Nottingham is significant. This was announced at the recent Association of Research Managers and Administrators conferenceas described by Natasha Robshaw.
The money in Nottingham University’s fund comes from the indirect expenses associated with grants that have been awarded to researchers at Nottingham. The allocation of these indirect expenses (or overhead) is determined by the university research administration, and they are intended to cover the costs of the infrastructure required to support research (equipment, facilities, libraries and so on). In its position statement on open access last year, the umbrella organization of the Research Councils in the UK indicated that publication fees for open access journals would be a legitimate use of indirect research expenses.
Of course, many funding agencies have indicated that open access fees can be included within the research grant itself, but publications might often arise after the grant has terminated, and this is where an institutional fund might prove particularly helpful (as well as for researchers who have insufficient funds). This practical approach to covering publication fees was suggested previously in a briefing note from the Research Information Network as also discussed here.
Why is all this so significant? ...[I]t’s a scalable way to fund open access publishing. Indirect costs, like research grants scale with research activity, and therefore with publishing output. The funds to cover open access publication fees will therefore grow naturally with the funds for research itself....
Bravo, Nottingham!
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/18/2007 10:06:00 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.
