Jim Giles, UK research councils claim success for open-access publishing plan, Nature, June 2, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'Britain's main public funders for research seem to have achieved the impossible — they've come up with a policy that pleases both sides in the debate over open-access publishing. But appearances can be deceptive. Behind public praise for the statement, some publishers are voicing fears that small journals will go out of business, which could put scientific societies at risk....Supporters of open access are claiming victory in the wake of rules drawn up by Britain's research councils, which distribute most government science funding. The policy has delighted them because it requires all council-funded papers be put in an open-access archive "as soon as possible" after publication. Other major funders of research around the globe, including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), allow researchers to wait up to a year before depositing their work. Stevan Harnad, an advocate of open access and a cognitive scientist at the University of Southampton, believes that the UK policy's insistence on submission will make the use of open-access archives a regular part of academic life. "Once the history of this is written, this statement will be the single most important factor," he says....But a crucial change to the policy, made following complaints from publishers, could dilute the power of archives. After consulting on an initial draft issued last autumn, the councils changed the policy so that submissions to archives will be subject to the copyright and licensing arrangement of the journal publishing the paper. Publishing executives say privately that they can now rewrite their rules so that submission takes place after a delay of several months, which will protect their subscription revenues....The Wellcome Trust, Britain's biggest medical charity, is even more bullish about the idea. It said on 19 May that all papers produced using its money will have to be submitted to the NIH archive PubMed Central or to the British equivalent that is being developed. "Old journals sometimes cease to publish, but new ones spring up," says Mark Walport, the trust’s director. "I have some sympathy with the learned societies, but it is not the primary mission of funders to support them." The councils' statement still has to be "fine-tuned", say officials. Originally due for release this month, it has been put back until the summer, but is not expected to undergo significant changes before then.'
Sidebar to the article: 'The UK policy. Scientists will submit papers to subjectpspecific archives or to an equivalent run by their institution. The paper would only be the final text document accepted for publication, not the formatted version that is printed. If this causes a range of archives to proliferate, access to papers should still be straightforward. Scholarly search engines, such as that unveiled last year by Google, automatically look through institutional repositories, so users shouldn't need to know where an article is actually held.'
(PS: This article is about the long-awaited open-access policy of the Research Councils UK (RCUK). In mid-April the RCUK predicted that the policy would be released in mid-May and we're still waiting. However, there have been enough leaks that Nature can run a story on the responses to the leaks. The policy is exciting because it's so strong --mandating OA rather than just requesting it, and applying to all publicly-funded research rather than just biomedicine. Unfortunately it looks like the final stage of consultation watered it down, just as with the NIH policy. However, the NIH policy was watered down further. The RCUK policy may invite publishers to delay OA through their copyright agreements, but apparently it will still mandate OA and still apply across all the fields receiving public funding.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/02/2005 11:24:00 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.
