JISC

RCUK final report, September 2008

Report summary

A survey to discover the impact of RCUK Open Access policies on pay-to-publish and self-archiving and the general impact of Open Access on the scholarly communication process.

The report is based on a literature review, a series of consultations with “stakeholders” (like funding bodies and Higher Education Institutions, publishers and teachers) and two surveys (one of HE libraries, one of researchers).

The introduction provides background on scholarly communication models and the emergence of Open Access (together with a definition of OA and the difference between ‘gold’ pay-to-publish OA and ‘green self-archiving of journal articles following an embargo period). It then makes the case for Open Access in terms of potential expansion of numbers of readers and discusses the relative merits of repositories versus peer-reviewed journals.

An overview of the current situation shows that there has been a move towards Open Access in the UK in the last decade, but that knowledge about it remains limited and there are large variation between disciplines.  There is also an overview of the journal market looking at who demands journals, where the costs lie and how they are funded.

They then highlight drivers for Open Access including the public good argument made above, the fact that research bodies don’t often have easy access to the research they have funded and the virtuous circle of increased access to research helping further research.  They also note the legacy of the “serials crisis” (the rising cost and number of journals since the 1970s) and libraries’ distrust of commercial publishers.

This is followed by an overview of the UK scholarly communications landscape, the role and number of Institutional Repositories in action and academic adoption of these repositories (which the authors note is slow). Journals  come under surveillance, particularly in relation to how easily academics can access them, the “increasingly stretched “ business model of journal publication and the benefits of “brand” and quality assurance they offer. There is also an overview of HE institutions’ and funders’ increasing use of mandates to bring in Open Access and concerns about potential costs of the pay-to-publish Open Access model, especially given the large volumes of research published in the UK.

They next look at publisher concerns about embargo periods, the impact Open Access (and subsequent subscription fee losses) could have on the good work of well-regarded Learned Societies and worries about  payment systems and the fact that there’s a strong profit motive to publish more lower quality articles in the pay-to-publish model.

Chapter 4 looks at other factors in the move to Open Access, and questions how changing international situations and the increased research output of country’s like China might make a difference. The authors also predict that the UK government is unlikely to mandate for Open Access and discuss differences between disciplines and the question of whether the traditional journal article is becoming obsolete, given that researchers can decide for themselves if articles in repositories are useful (they think not). They also state that they don’t think technology will have much more impact on the move to Open Access since most is already “fit for purpose”, before moving onto potential profit losses for publishers and fears for Learned Societies.

They state that repositories are not likely to be included in REF assessments and so there will be little forward impetus there, and look at other potential drivers like HE funding councils and JISC.

Chapter 5 looks at the current state of play with regard to Open Access in an attempt to establish national and international trends. There’s a lot of repetition here, but there are interesting new points about block deals between Dutch HEIs and publishers to allow academics in the Netherlands to publish in Open Access journals for free – although the authors note that is made easier in that case because of a smaller research community and fewer complexities than in the UK.

There follows a more statistical breakdown of the survey results on uptake of Open Access, use of repositories and attitudes to both – which vary from positive to negative to ignorance (for instance,” 65% of researchers were at institutions which were reported by the library staff to encourage self-archiving in a subject repository, but less than one in five of them – 19% - knew this.”) Significantly they note that subscription costs do not seem to be a barrier to access for large R&D labs outside institutions.

The authors then look at three potential scenarios with regard to Open Access defined by their client (a majority of funders move towards mandating OA, business as usual, a majority of funders demand OA is removed) and then move on to their conclusions. These note a trend towards acceptance of Open Access, but also obstacles such as the perception in many disciplines that Open Access journals lack impact. They also quote an RIN survey stating that pay-to-publish Open Access might have a net cost to the UK above the current subscription model . The report authors are sceptical about the risk that Open Access might  destroy  a scholarly publications  system that is already fit for purpose,  but do note that Learned Societies are likely to find it hard to compete and adapt to a new business model.

Key points

Researchers

“Knowledge is an international public good, and that barriers to accessing information should be minimised.”

OA has enabled:

• research outputs and data to be accessed by a wider academic constituency
• wider access by the non-academic community of users, although it is unclear whether this is a substantial benefit in practice
• quicker (free) availability of research results under Gold
• more efficient searching, and therefore research, in at least some disciplines

“One of the main opportunities related to subject-based repositories, often highlighted by funders, is their potential to enable derivative research by facilitating data mining. Consequently, there is increasing demand for underlying data to be placed in the repositories together with the research publication.”

“A significant minority of researchers (21%) felt that publishing in Open Access journals might adversely affect their careers.”

Publishers

“Opposition to OA arises largely from the view that commercial publishers and learned societies provide useful and necessary services to the research community, which have to be paid for.  Open Access may threaten the viability of a stable system.”

“The views of learned societies on the benefits of Open Access vary.  In general they expressed concern about the impact of Open Access on their publishing, often in relation to embargo periods, particularly by those societies where the ‘half-life’ of research is long.”

“Publishers, whether commercial or not-for-profit, add value to scholarly output.  Different levels of publishing activity are required for different kinds of output.  A simple working paper series with minimal peer review requires very little intervention and may well be published by a semi-formal group of colleagues but a peer reviewed paper, available electronically and in hard copy in a high impact journal, with all relevant metadata and other features, requires considerable work.”

“A number of survey respondents raised concerns about the potential for Open Access to be seen as vanity publishing, or for journals to accept increasing numbers of articles (perhaps of lower quality) in order to maximise income from authors.”

“The general conclusion is that publishers would only withdraw if OA publications were preferred by researchers.  If this were the case then OA publications would be meeting the needs of researchers and there seems to be no reason why scholarly communication should suffer.”

Funders

“Existing pay-to-publish models may burden smaller research funders, for example some of the small charities, and so reduce their opportunity to publish the results of their research and ultimately to fund research.”

“Research funders are increasingly mandating Open Access to research outputs, and requiring researchers to deposit articles in repositories.  Consultees, including librarians, argued that funder mandates have had a significant impact on behaviour and are the main influence on increased self-archiving.  However, the survey findings contradict this.”

“The costs of scholarly communication, notably quality control, are, however, still incurred.  A recent study sponsored by RIN estimated that there would be a net cost to the UK of a movement to a pay-to-publish model which in very broad terms is around 2% of the research  and HE funding councils research budgets.”  

“Several consultees (academics and publishers) argued that ‘the journals are not going to disappear’ and that ‘they bring value that is worth retaining as they have an important role in establishing quality rankings’.”

“We have not been able to find evidence that restricted access to research articles is significantly inhibiting the capability of businesses to innovate.”

Institutions

“Nine institutions responding to the survey had a policy on Open Access, and another thirteen were planning to introduce one (generally over the course of the 08/09 academic year).  Two- thirds of responding institutions had their own repositories, and a further quarter had plans to introduce one.  In general, Open Access has had no impact on library subscriptions to date.”

The case for OA with regard to funders

“…Since much research is funded by the taxpayer, taxpayers should have easy access to the results of the research which they collectively fund.  In addition, there are concerns on the part of funding bodies that they do not necessarily have access to publications stemming from research which they have funded, but must pay a subscription fee for access.”  

Open Access journals might benefit from ‘charitable’ status to cover their start up costs.

Making the case for OA to researchers

The authors cite “initial evidence” that publishing OA increases citations.

The business case for OA

“A move to OA could… expand the number of readers and the social and economic benefits arising through access to codified knowledge.”  

Read the full report