United Kingdom's open access policy urgently needs a tweak

The UK government, under the joint influence of the publisher lobby and short-sighted advice from Open Access (OA) advocates, has decided to make all UK research output OA within two years by diverting funds from UK research to pay publishers extra for (Gold) OA publishing, over and above what the UK (and the rest of the world) already pays publishers for journal subscriptions. This would merely be a needless waste of UK's scarce research funds in exchange for OA, instead of strengthening the UK's existing mandate for cost-free (Green) OA self-archiving. But the UK has also been persuaded to require researchers to pick and pay for Gold OA, instead of leaving the Green/Gold choice to them. This requirement needs to be dropped to prevent perverse consequences, both locally and globally, for both the UK and OA

Testing the Finch Hypothesis on Green OA Mandate Ineffectiveness

We have now tested the Finch Committee's Hypothesis that Green Open Access Mandates are ineffective in generating deposits in institutional repositories. With data from ROARMAP on institutional Green OA mandates and data from ROAR on institutional repositories, we show that deposit number and rate is significantly correlated with mandate strength (classified as 1-12): The stronger the mandate, the more the deposits. The strongest mandates generate deposit rates of 70%+ within 2 years of adoption, compared to the un-mandated deposit rate of 20%. The effect is already detectable at the national level, where the UK, which has the largest proportion of Green OA mandates, has a national OA rate of 35%, compared to the global baseline of 25%. The conclusion is that, contrary to the Finch Hypothesis, Green Open Access Mandates do have a major effect, and the stronger the mandate, the stronger the effect (the Liege ID/OA mandate, linked to research performance evaluation, being the strongest mandate model). RCUK (as well as all universities, research institutions and research funders worldwide) would be well advised to adopt the strongest Green OA mandates and to integrate institutional and funder mandates.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table, 4 figure

How and Why RCUK Open Access Policy Needs Revision

The Web is destined to become humankind's Cognitive Commons, where digital knowledge is jointly created and freely shared. The UK has been a leader in the global movement toward Open Access (OA) to research but very recently its leadership has been derailed by the joint influence of the publishing industry lobby from without and well-intentioned but premature and counterproductive over-reaching from within the OA movement itself.The result has been the extremely counter-productive Finch Committee Report followed by a new draft of the RCUK OA policy, downgrading the role of cost-free OA self-archiving of research publications ("Green OA") in favour of paying subscription publishers extra money, over and above subscriptions, out of scarce research funds, in exchange for making single articles OA ("hybrid Gold OA"). The motivation is to reform publication and to gain certain re-use rights, but the likely effect will be researcher resistance, very little OA, a waste of scarce research funds and the loss of the UK's global leadership in the OA movement. There is still time to fix the RCUK policy: Drop the 9 words that stipulate that if your chosen journal is a hybrid OA/non-OA subscription journal that offers (Libre) Gold OA, you must pay for Gold OA rather than just provide cost-free Green OA. -- And then implement a compliance verification mechanism to ensure that Green OA deposits are made in the author's institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication. (Embargoes, if any, should apply only to the data the deposit is made OA, not the date the deposit is made.)<br/

Academic libraries, open access and digital scholarship – a Delphi study

The thesis is an examination of the changing relationship between the academic library and university research. Advances in information technology, shifts in the modes of knowledge production and changes in research practice have affected all points of the research lifecycle. The implications for library practice are far-reaching. Informed by a review of the literature on the drivers of open access, digital scholarship and the knowledge economy, a web-based Delphi study was designed, conducted and analysed to identify the factors likely to have most impact on library practice. Thirty-five expert participants, all employed in roles such as library directors within universities, were asked to consider current and future scenarios for the development of the academic library, its identity and its shape and direction. In particular, the Delphi study investigated the overlapping areas of open access policy, research data management, organisational capacity, scholarly communication and peer review, and library leadership and workforce development. The findings of the research highlighted, firstly, the complexity of the policies and strategies associated with open access, secondly, their likely profound impact on the concept and character of the academic library, and, thirdly, the extent to which university and library leaders have yet to fully appreciate the potency and urgency of digital scholarship. The argument of the thesis is that academic libraries need to embrace transformative change and cultural shift across the entire research lifecycle, rather than simply responding with local, iterative change. In drawing on the expert understandings and reflections of key players, a conceptual framework is developed, to raise awareness of emerging issues and serve as a guide to future action