News

More flexible funding needed for OA, says Finch

19.06.12 | Benedicte Page

UK Research Councils and other funders should establish "more effective and flexible arrangements to meet the costs of publishing in open access and hybrid journals", according to the Finch Working Group Report into expanding access to research publications in the UK, published today (19th June). 

The review, led by Dame Janet Finch (pictured), has strongly supported a policy direction towards open access publication for research. But it said that flexible initiatives such as those adopted by the Wellcome Trust were important for the development. Funders' limitations on the length of embargo periods before which content could be made open access should also "be considered carefully to avoid undue risk to valuable journals". Future discussions and negotiations between universities and publishers on the pricing of big deals should also "take into account" the revenue implications faced by publishers, the review said. 

Among the key actions the review has recommended is to consider how best to manage the transition period into open access, with additional money to be made available "from the public purse", as well as "efficiency savings and other reductions in costs from publishers and other intermediaries." Dame Janet Finch's report said it was necessary to "keep under review the position of learned societies that rely on publishing revenues to fund their core activities, the speed with which they can change their publishing business models, and the impact on the services they provide to the UK research community."

The Publishers Association said it warmly welcomed the recommendations, calling them "a balanced package." However the PA also said that a critical issue from the publisher perspective would be that sufficient funds were available via the research councils, the funding councils and the universities to fund "gold" model open-access publication for UK researchers, as well as that the budgetary workflows were in place to deliver those to publishers. The PA also said it was critical that research funders did not require manuscript-posting embargo periods of less than 12 months. PA c.e.o. Richard Mollet called the review "a constructive exercise in terms of bringing a forensic analysis to a complicated area of public policy and achieving a consensus across different stakeholders as to a sustainable path to progress."

STM, the international association of scientific, technical and medical publishers, echoed the PA's comments on article funding and embargo periods. C.e.o. Michael Mabe said: "Finch demonstrates how the combination of pragmatic approaches and evidence-based policy development can yield acceptable outcomes for the UK public, for UK researchers and for the publishing community. STM hopes that other international discussions on open access can be informed by this process."

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By Stevan Harnad

----
COST-FREE MEANS COST-FREE

Most research-active universities today have an institutional repository. (See ROAR.)

Most of those repositories are near-empty, because most of those repositories don't have a deposit mandate (see ROARMAP).

The cost of maintaining a near-empty repository, though low (a server plus some free software, some one-time sysad start-up time and a few days a year maintenance, along with a lot of other institutional servers) is still very high if reckoned per item deposited in such a sparse, idle repository.

But with a Green OA mandate the deposit rate goes way up, and the marginal cost per deposit is so tiny as to be truly ridiculous to mention -- if it weren't for the fact that those OA deposits actually mean an increase on the return on the investment in research (an investment incomparably bigger than the set-up of another server). So it's benefits we should be talking about.

So cost-free stands.

Let's hear some of your other doubts...

Sat, 23/06/2012 - 03:07
By Chris Nichol

Stevan

You make some good points but fundamentally undermine them with your repeated use of the phrase 'cost-free Green OA'. Effective, tagged, managed repositories cost money.

I doubt some of your other assertions too.

Wed, 20/06/2012 - 11:32
By Stevan Harnad

FINCH REPORT, A TROJAN HORSE, SERVES PUBLISHING INDUSTRY INTERESTS INSTEAD OF UK RESEARCH INTERESTS

1. The Finch Report is a successful case of lobbying by publishers to protect the interests of publishing at the expense of the interests of research and the public that funds research.

2. The Finch Report proposes to do precisely what the (since discredited and withdrawn) US Research Works Act (RWA) failed to do: to push "Green" OA self-archiving (by authors, and Green OA self-archiving mandates by authors' funders and institutions) off the UK policy agenda as inadequate and ineffective and, to boot, likely to destroy both publishing and peer review -- and to replace them instead with a vague, slow evolution toward "Gold" OA publishing, at the publishers' pace and price.

3. The result would be very little OA, very slowly, and at a high Gold OA price (an extra 50-60 million pounds per year), taken out of already scarce UK research funds, instead of the rapid and cost-free OA growth vouchsafed by Green OA mandates from funders and universities.

4. Both the resulting loss in UK's Green OA mandate momentum and the expenditure of further funds to pay pre-emptively for Gold OA would be a major historic (and economic) set-back for the UK, which has until now been the worldwide leader in OA. The UK would, if the Finch Report were heeded, be left behind by the EU (which has mandated Green OA for all research it funds) and the US (which has a Bill in Congress to do the same -- the same Bill that the recently withdrawn RWA Bill tried to counter).

5. The UK already has 40% Green OA (twice as much as the rest of the world) compared to 4% Gold OA (less than the rest of the world, because it costs extra money and Green OA provides OA at no extra cost). Rather than heeding the Finch Report, which has so obviously fallen victim to the publishing lobby, the UK should shore up and extend its cost-free Green OA funder and institutional mandates to make them more effective and mutually reinforcing, so that UK Green OA can grow quickly to 100%.

6. Publishers will adapt. In the internet era, the research publishing tail should not be permitted to wag the research dog, at the expense of the access, usage, applications, impact and progress of the research in which the UK tax-payer has invested so heavily, in increasingly hard economic times. The benefits -- to research, researchers, their institutions, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public -- of cost-free Green Open Access to publicly funded research vastly outweigh the evolutionary pressure -- natural, desirable and healthy -- to adapt to the internet era that mandated Green OA will exert on the publishing industry.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS)

Tue, 19/06/2012 - 13:03
By Stevan Harnad

FINCH REPORT, A TROJAN HORSE, SERVES PUBLISHING INDUSTRY INTERESTS INSTEAD OF UK RESEARCH INTERESTS

1. The Finch Report is a successful case of lobbying by publishers to protect the interests of publishing at the expense of the interests of research and the public that funds research.

2. The Finch Report proposes to do precisely what the (since discredited and withdrawn) US Research Works Act (RWA) failed to do: to push "Green" OA self-archiving (by authors, and Green OA self-archiving mandates by authors' funders and institutions) off the UK policy agenda as inadequate and ineffective and, to boot, likely to destroy both publishing and peer review -- and to replace them instead with a vague, slow evolution toward "Gold" OA publishing, at the publishers' pace and price.

3. The result would be very little OA, very slowly, and at a high Gold OA price (an extra 50-60 million pounds per year), taken out of already scarce UK research funds, instead of the rapid and cost-free OA growth vouchsafed by Green OA mandates from funders and universities.

4. Both the resulting loss in UK's Green OA mandate momentum and the expenditure of further funds to pay pre-emptively for Gold OA would be a major historic (and economic) set-back for the UK, which has until now been the worldwide leader in OA. The UK would, if the Finch Report were heeded, be left behind by the EU (which has mandated Green OA for all research it funds) and the US (which has a Bill in Congress to do the same -- the same Bill that the recently withdrawn RWA Bill tried to counter).

5. The UK already has 40% Green OA (twice as much as the rest of the world) compared to 4% Gold OA (less than the rest of the world, because it costs extra money and Green OA provides OA at no extra cost). Rather than heeding the Finch Report, which has so obviously fallen victim to the publishing lobby, the UK should shore up and extend its cost-free Green OA funder and institutional mandates to make them more effective and mutually reinforcing, so that UK Green OA can grow quickly to 100%.

6. Publishers will adapt. In the internet era, the research publishing tail should not be permitted to wag the research dog, at the expense of the access, usage, applications, impact and progress of the research in which the UK tax-payer has invested so heavily, in increasingly hard economic times. The benefits -- to research, researchers, their institutions, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public -- of cost-free Green Open Access to publicly funded research vastly outweigh the evolutionary pressure -- natural, desirable and healthy -- to adapt to the internet era that mandated Green OA will exert on the publishing industry.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS)

Tue, 19/06/2012 - 13:03
By Chris Nichol

Stevan

You make some good points but fundamentally undermine them with your repeated use of the phrase 'cost-free Green OA'. Effective, tagged, managed repositories cost money.

I doubt some of your other assertions too.

Wed, 20/06/2012 - 11:32
By Stevan Harnad

----
COST-FREE MEANS COST-FREE

Most research-active universities today have an institutional repository. (See ROAR.)

Most of those repositories are near-empty, because most of those repositories don't have a deposit mandate (see ROARMAP).

The cost of maintaining a near-empty repository, though low (a server plus some free software, some one-time sysad start-up time and a few days a year maintenance, along with a lot of other institutional servers) is still very high if reckoned per item deposited in such a sparse, idle repository.

But with a Green OA mandate the deposit rate goes way up, and the marginal cost per deposit is so tiny as to be truly ridiculous to mention -- if it weren't for the fact that those OA deposits actually mean an increase on the return on the investment in research (an investment incomparably bigger than the set-up of another server). So it's benefits we should be talking about.

So cost-free stands.

Let's hear some of your other doubts...

Sat, 23/06/2012 - 03:07

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