The Finch Report and RCUK policies

Michael JubbResearch Information Network

5th Couperin Open Access Meeting24 January 2013

The Political Context innovation transparency returns on

investment a key principle

‘the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain’

Some related developments Review of Intellectual Property and Growth (‘Hargreaves

Report’) orphan works text mining

Royal Society report on Science as an Open Enterprise intelligent access

Open Data White Paper Research Transparency Sector Board

Justice Committee Post Legislative Scrutiny of FOI Act Administrative Data Task Force

EU Commission Communication: towards better access to scientific information Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific

information Amendments to public sector information directive

The Question and the Process

how to expand access, in a sustainable way, to peer-reviewed research publications

group of 13 representatives of universities, libraries, funders, learned societies, publishers different groups with different interests no perfect solution: ‘best-fit’

The Global Picture 2m. research publications a year

increasing at c.4% a year 25k scholarly journals

most subscription-based 8k open access growth of hybrid journals commercial publishers and learned

societies

Scholarly Communications and the UK Research Community

120k publications in 2010 13% humanities, social science & business 45% life sciences and medicine 42% physical sciences and engineering

strong competitive position more articles and more citations per researcher and per

£ spent more usage per article published citation impact and share of highly-cited papers second

only to US factors underpinning this success

Monographs library expenditure on monographs

declining in real terms, while expenditure on serials is increasing

rising prices and declining print runs no clear open access business model as

yet, but some experiments OAPEN-UK project (http

://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/)

Mechanisms and Success Criteria more UK articles available

globally more global articles

available in the UK sustain high-quality research sustain high-quality services

to authors and readers financial health of publishing

and learned societies costs to HE and funders

open access journals

repositories licence

extensions

Conclusions no single mechanism meets all the success

criteria a mixed economy transition to OA should be accelerated in an

ordered way tensions between interests of key stakeholders,

and risks to all of them costs global environment

promote innovation and sustain what is valuable

Recommendations clear policy direction towards Gold open access better funding arrangements, focusing responsibilities

in universities, not funders minimise restrictions on use and re-use expand and rationalise licensing

HE and NHS SMEs, public libraries

deal with subscriptions and APCs in a single negotiation experiment with OA monographs develop repository infrastructure caution about embargoes

Some responses Govt acceptance of recommendations

£10m one-off funding RCUK policy announcement

requirement for Gold + CC-BY (preferred), or Green with 6month embargo (12 months for humanities and social

sciences) consultation on REF 2020 awaited universities establishing publication funds and policies

BUT no co-ordinated implementation process

Research Councils UK (RCUK) policies requirement from 1 April 2013 for

Gold with a CC-BY licence (preferred), or Green with 6 months maximum embargo (12 months for humanities

and social sciences) block grant to universities to meet costs of article processing

charges (APCs) assumes c45% of articles from Research Council-funded projects will

be published in Gold OA journals in 2013-14, rising to 75% by 2017-18

some discussions continuing on issues including scope of papers covered, embargo periods, and CC-BY licences

management of publication process put firmly in hands of universities

reporting and monitoring arrangements research data?

Conclusion: some implementation issues

development of Green repository infrastructure metadata standards and interoperability

development of Gold infrastructure arrangements for payment of APCs

monitoring and evaluation of progress performance indicators?

university policies and procedures mandates, compliance, performance management…. implications of REF 2020

research data?

Thank you

Questions?

Michael Jubbwww.researchinfonet.org