UK access for UK research
Published in Serials 2007 20(3) pp. 231-2347
Report summary
In the light of concerns that changing purchasing models for journals have favoured big publishers over small and created more bias towards journals over monographs, a survey was undertaken to discover if: “researchers and learners in any UK university have barrier-free access to research publications from any other UK university?”
The authors highlight a particular worry about the expensive ‘big deals’ whereby institutions buy large numbers of journals in a package. The concern was that they might skew budgets in favour of big publishers’ journals and to the detriment of book-availability and smaller publishers.
The survey results are taken from six universities. Each one had the list of publications produced by their academic staff checked against the catalogue of another university to see how readily available their research was to other institutions - and vice versa.
The results showed that 63% of publications are available - either online or in paper format. However, that figure disguises considerable differences between institutions and variations in the type of publication available. One institution had 91% of publications available to its researchers. One just 32%. This variation between institutions can be partly explained by the different levels of funding they enjoy. Other results are independent of funding levels. Both large and small institutions favoured journals over books, for instance.
The worrying conclusion is that an average of one third of the research material produced in UK universities is not available to students and researchers in other UK universities. The ‘big deals’ do indeed also seem to be skewing funding in favour of journals.
Possible solutions put forward are targeted access funding for books and journals not included in the ‘big deals’. It’s also noted that: “new access models may provide a more cost- effective method to make up the shortfall in access”. The authors suggest a repository of publicly funded work could be created to which access is open.
Key points
How Open Access addresses university’s concerns
The key point is made that: “Even well-funded university libraries are unable to purchase all the books and journals required by researchers and learners.” Less well-funded universities are only able to buy in a small percentage of these books and articles. Worse still, the books and articles that are unavailable tend to be the same across the board because institutions always buy into the same ‘bid deals’. That’s to say, the books and articles not included in the big deal packages are far more likely to be the ones that are unavailable everywhere…
One implication is that Open Access might help solve these problems.
How Open Access addresses researchers' concerns
The survey illustrates the need for improvements to the way in which access to publicly-funded research is provided. New access models could make up for many of the shortfalls described in this survey.
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