An increasing number of research funders are introducing open access (OA) policies. At the same time, publishers are introducing OA publication options. Research institutions need to consider how to respond to these developments, including the possible introduction of institutionally co-ordinated funds for payment of OA publication charges. This paper describes the international background to the issue of institutional OA funds and summarizes the current UK situation, presenting recently gathered data from UK institutions. It then reports on work carried out by the University of Nottingham to introduce and manage an institutional OA fund. Early usage data of the Nottingham fund are presented. The paper outlines lessons learned from the Nottingham experience, then goes on to suggest a number of ways in which institutions and other agencies can take developments forward.
From the article:
... The University of Nottingham set up an institutional OA fund in 2006. ...
Usage of the fund is still relatively low. Data is available for three financial years (running from 1 August to 31 July): 2006–07, 2007–08, and 2008–09, and includes funding provided by Wellcome and BMC pre-payments. Over this period there have been a total of 210 payments made from the fund: 31 in 2006–07, 79 in 2007–08 and 100 in 2008–09. Of the 210 payments, 103 (49.0%) were articles published in BMC journals. Nottingham authors publish in the region of 4,000 journal articles per year, so the proportion of articles for 2008–09 which were provided with funding was only around 2.5% of University output. However, there is some anecdotal evidence which would suggest that a significant number of OA fees were paid by other means, including direct grants.
Over the three financial years, the total of the payments made was £233,581: in 2006–07, £28,597; in 2007–08, £84,370; in 2008–09, £120,614. Of the total payments of £233,581, £106,566 (45.6%) was for BMC articles. £45,000 of the overall total was contributed by the Wellcome Trust for the use of its grant-holders (and managed as part of the general central fund). The average (mean) cost per article across all three years was £1,112 (the averages change little over the three-year period). The mean for BMC articles was £1,035 (most BMC charges were at a discounted rate for pre-payment), and non-BMC articles £1,187. ...
Payments were made to a total of 26 publishers over the three financial years. In the majority of cases, there are only a small numbers of articles for each publisher. Apart from BMC, only five publishers received payments for more than five articles: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (9 articles), Elsevier (9), Oxford University Press (9), Public Library of Science (6), and Springer (10). Of the per-article prices charged by the 26 publishers, the highest was £2,975, and the lowest, £347. The price charged by the publisher averaged across this sample of publishers was £1,358. Although there was a cluster of learned society publishers making comparatively low charges, the mean charge for society publishers from this sample as a whole, £1,242, was only a little lower than the overall average. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 12/04/2009 04:33:00 PM.
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.
