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Barack Obama's new directive on Open Access is another indication the UK is being too rigid in its approach, according to UK's Political Studies Association.
The American president yesterday (25th February) issued a US directive to instruct federal agencies with annual research and development budgets of $100m or more to provide free online access to the results of that research. Articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research are to be made available after a 12-month embargo period.
The Association of Research Libraries officials has hailed the US Open Access development as a "historic" one. Meanwhile the Association of American Publishers, which opposed an open access bill recently introduced in Congress (the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, or FASTR), said the White House proposal offered "a reasoned approach absent from the FASTR Act".
Heather Joseph, executive director of The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which supports open access, called it a "landmark" development. "The Directive will accelerate scientific discovery, improve education, and empower entrepreneurs to translate research into commercial ventures and jobs," she said.
But in the UK, Helena Djurkovic, c.e.o. of the Political Studies Association, said the more flexible US approach was a further indication the UK was alone in preferring the "gold" open access model, despite the fact that universities minister David Willetts and Research Councils UK were convinced the rest of the world would follow in the same direction as the UK.
Djurkovic said: "I think it is an interesting indication of the way things are going. No one internationally is prescribing gold, they are leaving it open. We keep hearing RCUK and David Willetts saying the rest of the world are going to follow the same direction, but no one else is saying gold is the preferred route. Everyone else seems to be rather more flexible, in terms of the embargo periods and what model they want to follow.
"We are worried the gold route will have more negative consequences for the UK, because we are very worried by the fact that publishers all have an incentive to increase their volumes and we have no idea how we will be able to get articles peer reviewed."
She added that she hoped the US directive would create more of a debate around the UK's Open Access policies.
However Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, said it was “encouraging that the Administration recognises the value which publishers bring to scholarly research, and the need for dialogue in taking forward its policy." He said: " As we have seen in the UK through the Finch Review, a process of constructive dialogue with all interested stakeholders can result in a policy on open access which is sustainable and balanced.”
Last week (22nd February), Research Councils UK has said it has "learned lessons" after being accused of an "unacceptable" lack of clarity on open access by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee. The Committee also said RCUK must hold a review of the effects of the policy in autumn 2014, examining whether different disciplines require different embargo periods, licences and primary models of publication. It should also examine whether the UK is moving in the same direction as other countries, whether
article processing charges have adversely affected the number of international articles published in UK journals, and the effects on the quality of peer review.
The review must also assess the policy's impact on the number of collaborations by UK researchers and its effects on learned societies, said the Committee.