JISC

Bill Hubbard, Head of the CRC, JISC Research Communications Strategist (March 2010)

This report looks at issues relating to the implementation of open access within UK institutions and makes a series of recommendations to address them.

1) The economic climate and squeeze on public funding

Although the Houghton Report shows there is a long term, sector-wide cost benefit to Open Access when taken as a complete system, further investment is needed now to realise those savings, and open access could be a casualty of short term cost-cutting. JISC needs to consider further how to engage and persuade senior institutional managers about the case for open access.

2) Open access as a national economic lever

Recent reports have highlighted the need for research commercialisation and knowledge exchange. open access should be recognised as having the potential to further these aims and open access should be represented to government as a national economic lever.

3) The Research Excellence Framework

There is a concern that aspects of the Research Excellence Framework discourage open access. The report recommends that stakeholders ensure the Higher Education Funding Council for England and other funding Councils are fully aware of the benefits of open access, and the potential of the existing repository network that may be of use in the Research Excellence Framework.

4) Open access publication costs

There is confusion about the funding available for open access publication and wide variations in the way it is allotted. There is no seamless workflow to access publication costs and for repository use. Discussions are needed with Research Councils UK to help create a clear model and to examine the idea of a publication period as an extension to a research grant.

5) Publishers and learned society publishers

Many publishers accept they have to deal with open access but are doing so by withdrawing free archive permissions and the substitution of a paid-for open access option for publication. The report suggests this may be a price worth paying. Despite evidence that repository managers take IPR very seriously, some publishers still fear repositories are being championed by “copyright busters”. Closer engagement and advocacy is needed to overcome these and other misconceptions.

6) Research data

Institutions need to develop data archiving policies and funders need to provide guidance to prevent conflicts of interest and understanding about how research data can and should be exploited - and by whom.

7) Research funder mandates

Although many research funders have made open access dissemination a condition of their research grants, compliance rates remain low. Compliance checking needs to be carried out, and researchers need better support to help them understand how to comply, the benefits of doing so and related copyright issues.

8) Services for institutional repositories

These often need to be improved (searching for articles, for instance, is still seen as a problem), so that repositories come to be seen as information providers as well as storage mechanisms.

9) Social networking

The uptake of academic social networks such as Mendeley has been rapid compared to that of repositories. Many articles are shared on these networks without due diligence performed with regard to copyright. It is important to understand and learn from social networking sites - and possibly work with them in future.

10) ACTA - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Negotiations are being carried out internationally with relation to intellectual property and copyright. It is possible ACTA may have an impact on open access, although it is unclear how until the details are made public.

Read the report in full