5. The JISC supports initiatives to enhance access to the products of publicly-funded UK research and is spending over £10 million per annum on digital repositories from 2006. Access to research outputs will be improved as a result of the statement by the RCUK on open access but JISC’s supporting initiatives will be at risk if the statement is weakened. JISC therefore welcomes the proposal for mandatory deposit of journal articles by authors into a repository. In particular, the JISC notes that: [a] The current system of journal publication has significant shortcomings, and there is robust evidence that it negatively affects the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of UK research (see Scientific Publications: Free for all? Tenth Report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.) [b] There is no substantive evidence that a mandatory requirement on researchers to deposit a copy of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript into an open access repository will impact negatively on journal publishers’ business – indeed, such evidence as exists (such as that relating to the long-established e-print archive ‘arXiv’ ) suggests the opposite (see Swan, A. and Brown, S (2005) Open access self-archiving: an author study). Furthermore, the evidence shows that the mandatory requirement is an essential component of an effective position on open access. [c] Research has begun to identify viable business models consistent with open access that can be adopted by learned societies. JISC recently funded a study to explore how learned society publishers can consider making a transition to a sustainable open access business model, and what the funding sources and requirements would be in order to do so.
6. The JISC is investing heavily in an infrastructure to enable innovative research to take place, including interoperable repositories, preservation best practice and user-oriented services, and open access remains an important cornerstone of this infrastructure. The JISC looks forward to continuing to collaborate against a common agenda and work with RCUK to improve access to publicly-funded research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/20/2005 09:13:00 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.
