David Prosser of SPARC Europe used the UK Freedom of Information Act to discover how often Lord David Sainsbury met with publishers and researchers in the past two years. Sainsbury is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation for the UK, a minister in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and a key player in setting UK science and OA policy. Here's the answer:
Meetings between Lord Sainsbury and publishers and researchers over the past 2 years.
1. DTI co-ordinated the government response to the S&T Select Committee inquiry on Scientific Publications on behalf of DTI/DCMS/DfES//DfID/HMC&E/DH and consulted at length with RCUK,HEFCE and the JISC and with colleagues in funding bodies of the devolved authorities.
2. The government's position is to facilitate a level playing field and to review this in light of any emerging evidence. RCUK developed its position statement in consultation with stakeholders and submitted this to the government. RCUK was encouraged to disseminate widely and received many constructive comments. A further consultation exercise was undertaken which closed at the end of August. RCUK is working closely with all interested parties to look at all the concerns and endeavour to clarify and refine its position.
3. There were no DTI reports. Any briefing is reflected in the Government's responses to the inquiries and subsequent Government position.
4. You wished to know specifically what meetings Lord Sainsbury had with publishers, researchers and members of the Library community on this issue, over the last two years:-
13 February 2004 - Lord Sainsbury meeting with Sir Crispin Davis
9 March 2004 - Lord Sainsbury meeting with Harold Varmus PLOS
4 May 2004 - Lord Sainsbury meeting with ALPSP
14 October 2004 Lord Sainsbury telephone call with Sir Crispin Davis
22 July 2005 Lord Sainsbury with Prof Iain Diamond RCUK
16 September 2005 - Lord Sainsbury meeting with Sir Crispin Davis
19 September 2005 - Lord Sainsbury attended BMA Lunch
Comment. Here are a few annotations. Sir Crispin Davis is the CEO of Reed Elsevier. Harold Varmus is one of the co-founders of the Public Library of Science (PLoS). The ALPSP is the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. Iain Diamond is the Chief Executive of the Research Councils UK (RCUK). The BMA is the British Medical Association. For the timeline above, note that the House of Commons Select Committee issued its strong OA recommendations in July 2004; the DTI-coordinated government response rejected them in November 2004; and the RCUK released its draft OA policy for public comment in June 2005. Bottom line: Lord Sainsbury met with OA opponents roughly twice as often as with OA proponents, and met with the Reed Elsevier CEO three times more often than with any other stakeholder. DTI apparently undertook no analysis of its own on OA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/12/2005 12:31:00 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.
