JISC

October 2004

Report summary

A response to a parliamentary report with many  conclusions and recommendations relevant to JISC (nine out of 82 of which mention JISC specifically).

The Executive Summary notes areas where JISC’s activities are relevant to the report  - such as the identification of the need for change in the scientific publishing model (which JISC has also recommended), the need to get better licensing deals from publishers and a  discussion of institutional repositories.

Next, there are more detailed summaries of the report’s findings and JISC’s intentions in response to them. These relate to:

• Investing additional funding towards building up the concept of a Common Information Environment
• The need for further co-ordination with regard to the Scholarly Communications Group and more international collaboration  - and more budget increases to enable all that
• Continued work on building up Institutional Repositories and further reports on how best to do this. It’s noted that JISC doesn’t have the funding to allow all institutions to build up repositories as the report requests and that more will have to be supplied
• Digital preservation – the problems of guaranteeing its longevity and the need for collaboration between institutions
• More exploration of the lifecycle for research data
• JISC’s support for Open Access journals like BioMed continues but needs more funding to 'pump-prime' such initiatives on a larger scale
• Continuing experimentation with journal procurement methods and pressing for better licensing agreements from publishers
• Exploration around the foundation of a content procurement company

The response then moves onto drawing attention to JISC’s relevance to other aspects of the Parliamentary report. Those related to Open Access include:

• Recommendations on discussion of and action on Open Access at international level
• Recommendations that primary research data be made available – which fits with JISC’s vision for institutional repositories containing such material
• Recommendations to build further repositories and for research to be disseminated 'as widely as possible'
• Recommendations regarding self-archiving, which JISC feels needs funding back-up
• Recommendations concerning the role of the British Library in archives  - and funding thereof
• Recognition of the need for national co-ordination between repositories
• Recognition of the need to address concerns over copyright issues relating to repositories
• Potential funds for researchers wishing to publish under the author-pays model
• Assistance for Learned Society journals
• More experimentation with the author-pays publishing model

There is then a discussion of the licensing issues raised by the report, such as the  increasing cost of journals, restrictive practices in relation to journal purchase,  the need for JISC and the NHS to work together on some procurements,  the need for provisions to enable teachers to reproduce digital content in their lessons and lectures,  the need for wider access to digital journals for library users, the need for monitoring of journal pricing,  protection of continued access to digital content after a subscription has been cancelled, the problems related to journal bundles offered by publishers,  the need for a national strategy with regard to journal purchasing.

Key points

Researchers

[The report] recommends that “the Research Councils and other government  funders mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of all their articles in a repository”.

Institutions

“With the advent of electronic journals, libraries have the opportunity to obtain robust quantitative data about  levels of periodical use and to analyse how far their investment represents value for money. Good analysis of such data could be a powerful tool in future negotiations with publishers when deals are to be renewed, and could help to inform thinking about viable alternative economic models for electronic journals.”

Publishers

“The tenor of the relevant  sections in the Report is to encourage the JISC and universities to press for better pricing and  licensing terms from publishers.”

“Recommendation 6  concerns purchasing models based upon access for a limited number of simultaneous users and recommends that the JISC “strongly argues the case against such restrictive practices when it negotiates the terms for the next national site licence with publishers”

Recommendation 27 concerns transparency in publishers’ costs, enabling publicly-funded organisations to know what elements a publisher has included in a cost calculation. The recommendation is “We urge the JISC and other buying bodies to press for greater transparency in this area”.

Funders

More funds are needed to build up repositories and fill in the requirements of the report (as detailed above).

National partnership

At present there is no national co-ordination between repositories outside the FAIR programme. The report recommends that there should be more as the content in repositories has national as well as local value.

International partnership

The Scholarly Communications Group needs to foster further international collaboration.

There are recommendations in the report for discussion and action on OA at international level – which JISC welcomes.

Read the full report (PDF)