Open Access News

Research Councils UK (RCUK), the umbrella organisation of eight research councils, is proposing to make it a requirement of the grants it awards (and those awarded by its members) that research findings be archived in openly available repositories, either at the university where the research is being conducted or at a repository belonging to subject bodies....The costs of such an enormous undertaking on behalf of universities and other research institutions is being funded in part by the JISC, and by savings made by universities and other institutions from the fees which they would have otherwise paid to journals to secure publication of research findings....The move towards open access is not, however, without its shortcomings. There will undoubtedly be significant costs incurred by research institutions as they publish the research findings on their internet sites, from the costs of hardware storage space to the cost of personnel to sift, upload and archive the information. While the JISC may assist with this cost initially there is no guarantee that it will continue to fund what will undoubtedly be a growing burden in years to come. Anyone who has conducted research using the internet will know that one of the disadvantages of using it as a research tool is the varying quality of the material found. The peer review process used by many leading journals to sift material to be published ensures that the quality of published research is of a suitable standard and that that standard is maintained. Making all research findings available on the internet will not, at least initially, provide the same assurances of quality. No doubt over time certain institutions will develop a name for the quality of their research output, whereas others may not. In the meantime uncertainty as to quality will remain. For researchers, particularly in the scientific fields, one of the difficulties faced in connection with publication is the risk that early publication will undermine valuable patent rights. Patent protection is only available to novel inventions that display a sufficient inventive step....A further danger of open access is the potential loss of effective copyright and design right protection following publication, simply because it is much harder to control the reproduction of material once it is made available on the internet. Proving the date of first publication or even the originality of ideas and articles may also become increasingly difficult, thereby reducing the value (in commercial terms) of the initial research. One of the inevitable consequences of the Open Access initiative will be the loss of revenue for publishing companies which depend on publication fees as a primary source of income. Subscription fees may also be hit if readers find that the bulk of the material in which they are interested is being published elsewhere.

Comment. Wow. A second string of misunderstands in one day. A few quick replies. (1) The RCUK open-access policy is not likely to result in journal cancellations --hence in library savings-- even though other OA initiatives may well do so. (2) Running an OA repository is not expensive and brings direct benefits to the hosting institution by increasing its research profile and impact. Not supporting OA repositories would be even more expensive, by undermining the considerable national investment in publicly-funded research. (3) The work of depositing articles in OA repositories is distributed among the authors, who on average will only need 6-10 minutes to deposit an article. Authors who understand the benefits will do it from self-interest, to enlarge their audience and impact, and spend far less time on it than they spend e.g. bringing their work to the attention of department chairs, deans, and colleagues elsewhere. (4) Isaac seems to think that the deposited articles will bypass peer review, which is incorrect. The policy will only apply to articles that have been approved by the peer-review process at independent journals. (5) Isaac seems to think that the policy will force grantees to disclose patentable discoveries before they might be ready to do so, which is incorrect. The policy only applies to work that authors voluntarily publish in journals or present at conferences. (6) There is no copyright problem here. The deposited articles are under copyright. Authors remain free to transfer copyright to journals. In fact, the current draft of the policy even makes an exception to the OA mandate when journals insist on "copyright arrangements" incompatible with early or open access. (7) The policy will not disrupt the commercial value of articles, if only because scholarly journal articles have no commercial value in the relevant sense. Perhaps Isaac does not realize that journals do not pay authors.