JISC

Open access has been welcomed as a positive development by institutional managers, funders, academic bodies and researchers both in the UK and globally. This is what some of them have to say.

 

 "The Medical Research Council (MRC) is committed to advancing and disseminating knowledge and technology and to promote dialogue with the public about medical research. The MRC policy is that all primary research publications should be made publicly available within six months of publication. As part of our ongoing support for MRC authors in ensuring compliance with the policy, whether it be publishing costs or copyright, we are encouraged to see JISC developing robust guidelines which will broaden the range of opportunities for quality research to be widely and freely accessed."

Tony Peatfield, MRC Director of Corporate Affairs

 

 "Open access enables research papers to join the open web of linked data, which will transform the ways in which those papers can be used, and therefore how research can benefit the economy and society. JISC has been quick to realise this potential and continues to lead through its initiative to equip UK universities to maximise the value of their research through open access."

Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton

 

 "Ensuring research is sustainable in the long term is essential to knowledge creation and innovation. Open access helps to address the issues of sustainability that have arisen with the current system. Universities, researchers, publishers and research funders need to work together to ensure production and access to research can not just be maintained, but be improved."

Rachel Bruce, JISC Programme Director, Information Environment

 

 "Over the past ten years JISC has played a vital role in shaping the debate surrounding scholarly communications. From invaluable evidence-gathering studies through practical projects and support for all flavours of open access, the work of JISC has placed the UK in a leading position internationally in the wide dissemination and use of research outputs."

David Prosser, SPARC Europe

 

"No other organisation in the UK, or in the world, has done so much work in this area."

Fred Friend, Honorary Director of Scholarly Communication, UCL

 

 

 

 "I think the greatest achievement of JISC so far in open access has been to promote the debate earnestly and consistently over the past 12–15 years, to get it on the research councils’ agenda, to engage with other countries and indeed, in the debate internationally on open access I think we’ve achieved a lot there. I think we’ve now got to move on and engage the research community and the practitioners more effectively."

Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary to the JISC
 

 

"JISC has been a very important player in the open access arena. There are three areas they have excelled at. Firstly, in terms of promoting the idea of open access, engaging with publishers, engaging with the research community and generally making the argument for open access. Secondly, on a practical level, we are working with JISC and the Research Information Network to scope out a piece of work that will look at how we might effectively transition from a subscription model to an alternative model which is open access. JISC have been instrumental in bringing players together to take that debate forward. Thirdly, from a parochial perspective of UK PubMed Central, JISC gave seed funding to help that project get started. We value the work that JISC is doing."

Robert Kiley, Head of Digital Services at the Wellcome Library

 

 "I was involved with JISC in making the very first exploratory steps towards open access to scholarship through institutional repositories. I now am witnessing an increasing appreciation of the value and potential of these repositories for widening access to research outcomes and teaching materials. We must thank JISC for the vision and the support that has made this transformational journey possible."

Alison Allden, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Statistics Agency

 

 

 "I don’t think there is any equivalent organisation to JISC anywhere else in the world. The fact that it exists and is looking so openly and constructively at all of the scholarly publishing models is a real benefit for everybody – it’s a benefit for Australia and New Zealand and other countries as well."

Professor John Houghton, Professorial Fellow at Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

 

 

 "JISC has done some very valuable work in the kind of experimentation that we’ve been undertaking. JISC is doing a good amount of research in this area, which is helping to inform the debate."

Malcolm Richardson, Managing Director Oxford Journals