The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) held its seventh meeting on 23 October 2012. This is a summary of that meeting.

Current position

The group heard that sector attitudes toward the Finch Report and RCUK policy were becoming more supportive and focusing increasingly on the practical steps to implement it. Outstanding questions remain, however, for example around compliance monitoring, funding APCs, and ensuring reductions in subscription costs as aggregate UK APC payments increase. These need to be addressed if the sector as a whole is to be fully behind moves toward Gold OA.

Members considered a draft report on progress toward open access in the UK, covering the targets set in the group’s 2012 strategy. This report is part of a study that is developing methods in this area, and will track trends over a year. Once the report is complete, then it will be released, and will be important information for the sector and wider community.

Next steps

The OAIG report (written by RIN) on the potential of intermediary roles in managing Gold OA was reviewed by members, and potential next steps considered. The report will be released very soon, and crystallises very well the variety of requirements from publishers, universities and funders.

Three events are planned in the new year, two on Gold OA and one on the future of repositories in the context of universities’ wider mission. These will review what infrastructure, workflows, policies and skills are likely to be needed to support OA in a post-Finch world, and share this information among universities, funders and publishers. Changes are likely to be needed in infrastructure, organisational and staff capacity, which these events, and the preparation and follow-up around then, should illuminate. Some of these events will be open, but some may need to be invitation-only, to ensure that the right experts and stakeholders are in the room where specific work needs to be done.

The group reviewed the information resource on good practices for universities adopting OA, recently released by Harvard University, and agreed to endorse this as a detailed guide for institutions seeking to adopt policies in this area.

Members of the group raised the issue again of publishers approaching institutions to require bilateral agreements for self-archiving, where OA policies are in place. This practice appears to be persisting in some cases, despite a call by OAIG last year for it to stop. Some members of the group have agreed to clarify the position with their members.

Futures

The group discussed its role with respect to research data. At present, its work focuses on OA to published research outputs, but there might be related areas wherein it could complement policy work going on elsewhere, such as the Cabinet Office Research Sector Transparency Board. There was a consensus that this deserved further consideration, and it will be a full agenda item at the next meeting.

Members of the group also considered the evolution of the Gold OA market, in the light of industry analysis and other developments. This is a fast-changing environment, as witnessed for example by the implementation of the SCOAP3 initiative. Existing business models are going to continue to be challenged by innovation in the sector. OAIG supports this innovation, and will work on a summary of the attributes of a fully transparent and competitive market for Gold OA that could help guide it in the future.

Membership

The group welcomed Kitty Inglis, librarian at Sussex University, as the new SCONUL representative, replacing David Ball who is retiring.

Next meeting

The group will meet next on 11 January 2013. If anyone has issues they would like to raise for this meeting, they should contact one of the group’s members in good time.

JISC and the Wellcome Trust are pleased to announce that they have commissioned the Research Information Network (RIN) to take forward work to specify the potential role for intermediary organisations in managing open access article processing charges (APCs).

The work, which is being commissioned by the two funders on behalf of the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG), will examine how intermediary organisations could enhance efficiencies for universities, publishers and research funders, and enable the payment of APCs on a much larger-scale in the UK. This will be key as the government progresses the vision set out in the Finch Group report of ensuring that all publicly funded research is made available in open access form.

Over the next two months RIN will be consulting with each of these key stakeholder groups, and with potential intermediary organisations, to look at how such intermediaries might generate economies of scale and reduce the overall burden on the sector. It will also consider the business and governance models that intermediaries could adopt and the potential for them to provide key value-added functions, such as enabling the routine collection of metadata on gold open access and achieving overall cost savings in the payment of APCs.

Robert Kiley, head of digital services at the Wellcome Trust and a member of the OAIG, said “We are delighted that RIN has agreed to take on this key project. RIN’s expertise and understanding of the complex issues involved is second to none, and their position as a highly respected and trusted independent research organisation makes them the ideal partner for JISC and the Wellcome Trust in taking forward this work”.

For further information about this project, please contact David Carr at the Wellcome Trust (d.carr@wellcome.ac.uk) in the first instance.

The recent Finch report – all of whose conclusions have been accepted by the UK government – recommended a move to open access (OA) for UK research, with a focus on Gold OA in which the costs of publication will generally be met by authors through up-front article processing fees, if and when charged. This transition will present challenges to all stakeholders across the research lifecycle, from institutions and researchers to scholarly societies, funders and publishers.

As one of its responses to Finch, the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) has commissioned the creation of resources to provide information, advice and guidance for stakeholders – and in particular for scholarly societies – on moving to and managing Gold OA.

The work, which will be undertaken by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), will include a stakeholder analysis categorising the different types of stakeholder in Gold OA and a summary of the main issues and concerns for each group. A support resource overview will list key support resources already in existence and their relevance to different stakeholders while a gap analysis will prioritise the support resources that need to be developed to further improve the guidance on offer for all those involved in the transition.

While the main body of the resource is due to be completed by the end of the year, the OAIG intends to sustain the resource beyond the launch to ensure its continuing utility as the OA environment develops.

“We see this as a living resource, as we are all learning about how best to do this,” said Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, one of the members of the OAIG. “For Gold OA to scale up over time to cover all UK-authored journal articles, then we have to work with everyone involved, to make sure that lessons and guidance are shared toward the common purpose of open access.”

This new resource is part of a portfolio of work commissioned by the OAIG to support universities and other stakeholders as they respond to the Finch report. It includes the study Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling by Alma Swan and John Houghton, which shows the likely costs and implications of the Finch recommendations on universities, and work funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust which will look at how the article processing charges can be managed efficiently and what role an intermediary might play in making the process work smoothly. The new Gold OA resource also complements last year’s resource pack aimed at repositories.

The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) held its sixth meeting on 25th July 2012. This is a summary of that meeting.

Finch report

Members confirmed that they interpret the Finch report as supportive of all kinds of open access, including repositories. OAIG sees a valuable role for publishers, repositories and others in creating a sustainable, competitive, efficient and innovative environment for scholarly communication. OAIG sees the recent RCUK OA policy as consistent with the Finch report. OAIG does not see price regulation as a sensible approach to ensuring that Gold OA is affordable, rather seeing an effective market as being the best solution.

Next steps

OAIG members see vital work to be done during the transition to OA, in monitoring the effect of OA policies and practices. Members agreed that all parties are likely to need to take risks, and that clear, relevant and robust evidence about the transition would be welcomed by all. Members were keen that OAIG play an active role in this work.

There is a need for all parties to have practical discussions about the implementation of a technical and organisational infrastructure that supports Gold OA efficiently and effectively. OAIG hopes to convene a workshop for this purpose in the autumn.

While repositories will continue to have a role in OA, they also have emerging roles in grey literature, supporting material for articles, monographs, and so on, through which repositories could expand their value to their parent organisations and to researchers. The repository community needs to consider these roles and the ways in which, through them, it can offer more real value to their parent organisations and to researchers. OAIG members agreed to explore whether they could help the repository community in this way.

Liaison

The Group agreed that further, more detailed liaison was needed to identify issues arising in the implementation of OA. Key groups with which OAIG members will liaise over the next few months include subscription publishers, the Russell Group of universities, knowledge transfer professionals, and biomedical research charities.

Workplan

Several pieces of important work recommended by OAIG are being set up. These include a project to agree vocabularies to describe open access articles, a project to explore the role of intermediaries in the Gold OA market, and the development of advice and guidance for all stakeholders in a transition to Gold OA. One project is ongoing, which is compiling data to enable OAIG to monitor progress against a set of indicators that OAIG have agreed for 2012 (see the OAIG website for more details).

Next meetings

The OAIG will next meet on 23 October 2012, and then on 18 December 2012.

The recent Finch report said that universities will have to be increasingly efficient in the way they pay for open access publishing in the form of article processing charges (APCs).

Responding to the recommendation, new work funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust on behalf of the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) will look at how we can help universities manage the charges efficiently and also what role an intermediary might play in making the process work smoothly.

The new study will build on the OAIG’s earlier findings:

• Firstly, research by JISC Collections on behalf of the OAIG has shown that many hybrid journal publishers, research institutions and funders have not yet developed efficient back office systems to manage open access payments. This can sometimes lead to lengthy delays and other administrative problems.
• Secondly, OAIG members and publishers have together highlighted the potential role for suitable intermediaries in providing support and services. These intermediaries could help avoid ‘doubling up’ of back-office systems and make it easier to reconcile data for both publishers and funders.

Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, said: “This work will be an important step forward in helping universities and other research organisations prepare for open access publishing. We envisage that an intermediary role might help publishers, funders and research organisations by reducing transaction costs, speeding up payment of APCs and ensuring an efficient and competitive market in Gold OA.”

The request for proposals and full project specification are available. Please contact David Carr at the Wellcome Trust (d.carr@wellcome.ac.uk) with any queries.

The deadline for proposals (which should be sent to David Carr) is 5pm on 31 July 2012 and we will be able to share more after the work has been completed in the Autumn.

The transition to open access for UK research, recommended by the recent Finch Report, will challenge stakeholders across the research lifecycle to play their part. A new report ‘Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling’ by Alma Swan and John Houghton, commissioned by the UK Open Access Implementation Group, shows the likely costs and impact on one of those stakeholders – the university – under various conditions.

The new Swan / Houghton report shows how the Finch report’s estimates that perhaps £38m will be needed per year during the transition to pay for article processing charges and associated costs, and £3m – £5m for repositories, might be distributed between different kinds of universities, for example those focusing on vocational or applied research, and pre- and post- 1992 universities.

The report shows that Green open access (OA), making research papers available via repositories, is the cheapest option for universities during a transition when they have to maintain subscriptions to journals. However, the Finch report suggests that the UK should aim to move toward Gold OA (open access journals) and the Swan / Houghton report concludes that, with worldwide Gold OA, all universities would see savings if article processing charges were at the current average levels, with large research-intensive universities seeing the greatest savings. However, this could mean they face the greatest costs should the progress toward open access be less than worldwide, and more subscriptions had to be maintained for longer.

Martin Hall, chair of UKOAIG and vice chancellor of the University of Salford, reflects that, “the reality is likely to be a mixed model, between these scenarios, where Green OA retains an important role as a cost-effective route for universities to share their research, while the money available from research funders enables a steady move to Gold OA.

“It is extremely hard to predict how the transition to open access will evolve and, given these varied possibilities and their implications for universities, it seems clear that all parties will benefit from greater information and transparency on how that transition is going and its effects on universities, funders, publishers and others. The Finch Report’s recommendation for a monitoring role is key.”

Read ‘Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling’ by Alma Swan and John Houghton

The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) welcomes the release of the ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications’, or Finch report, published today. Taking all perspectives into account, it has concluded that the best interests of UK higher education, research and innovation, and of the UK economy and society, are best served by a move to open access to the published outputs from the UK public science base.

The report, like the OAIG, recognises a number of very real, practical challenges that face us on this road. The OAIG is already working on some of these, as are its individual members and many others. As an established coordinating mechanism, the OAIG is perhaps a good basis on which to build the partnerships that will be needed to navigate the UK successfully to open access.

Martin Hall, chair of OAIG and member of the Finch Group whose work has led to the new report, notes “This is a turning point for UK research and innovation, which sees open access accepted as a necessary goal for all involved in scholarly communication. It has sometimes been a difficult path to get here, and I am sure that there will be uneven ground ahead, but there is now a clear sense of direction and a willingness on all sides to work together to implement the recommendations from this report. The result will surely be better research, innovation, higher growth and better services for all.”

Read the Finch report in full

Find out more about the OAIG

Open Access to published scholarly research offers significant benefits to the UK, according to two reports released today by the UK Open Access Implementation Group.

The UK public sector already saves £28.6 million by using OA [1].

The reports make it clear that both the public sector and the voluntary sector would see further direct and indirect benefits from increased access to UK higher education research publications.

Already, more Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations use OA than pay for subscriptions, despite the fact that subscription journals make up the vast majority of journals on offer [2].

The UK public sector spends £135 million a year, made up of subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles, accessing the journal papers it needs to perform effectively. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via open access on the web would save the public purse £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved. [3]

The UK’s valuable voluntary and charitable sector would also benefit from open access to academic research. For survey respondents, the two most frequently mentioned barriers to accessing research were cost (80%) and lack of time (46%). [4]

Professor Martin Hall, vice-chancellor at the University of Salford and chair of the OAIG, says, “These findings mark a turning point in the quiet revolution of open access. There are many good reasons for making research available on an open access basis, and the reports are clear that one reason is because open access makes economic sense. The UK Open Access Implementation Group is committed to helping the public, private and academic sectors benefit from UK research and I am proud that these reports further that cause.”

Making more research free at the point of access, and easier to search across could produce significant savings, but could also lead to better decisions based on all the available evidence. As one senior scientific officer in a specialist scientific unit of large department of state observes “Open access would allow a lot more speculative reading and reading around the subject which is really useful for a holistic and high quality view to be developed.” [5]

This, in turn, offers benefits back to researchers, boosting the impact of their research by increasing its reach outside the academy.

These findings are borne out across all three reports in this series, and this body of new, quantitative work provides compelling evidence that increasing open access to research articles will have direct financial and practical benefits for the UK as a whole, benefits that are especially valuable in a time of austerity.

Professor Martyn Harrow, executive secretary of JISC, which is a member of the OAIG, said: “Jisc is pleased to contribute expertise and assistance to the important work of the OAIG and we welcome this report.”

The reports make a number of recommendations around increasing awareness of open access in these two important sectors. These include promoting the value of the information produced as a result of public research funding [6] and exploring ways of improving relationships between academic researchers and workers I other sectors who rely on their research to do their jobs well. [7]

The UK OAIG is working to add value to the work of the member organisations to increase the rate at which the outputs from UK research are available on open access terms, and these reports show how important that work is to the UK.

Read the reports in full

Rightscom/Matrix Evidence (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research Outputs to the public sector. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group

NCVO/OPM (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for voluntary and charitable sector organisations. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group

References

[1] Rightscom/Matrix Evidence (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research Outputs to the public sector. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group, p5.

[2] NCVO/OPM (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for voluntary and charitable sector organisations. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group, p6.

[3] Ibid. p20.

[4] NCVO/OPM (2012) Op. Cit. p30.

[5] Rightscom/Matrix Evidence (2012) Op. Cit. p25.

[6] Ibid, p29.

[7] NCVO/OPM (2012) Op. Cit. p38.

NOTES TO EDITORS

What is open access?

Open access is free online access to the outputs of publicly funded research. It is typically focused on peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers. Open access benefits UK research by increasing its impact and enabling researchers to use any such outputs they might need for their work. Open access benefits the UK economy by enabling innovation, policy and practice better to draw from rigorous academic research.

Find out more about open access at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess

What is the UK OAIG?

The aim of the UK Open Access Implementation Group is to add value to the work of the member organisations, both strategically and practically, to increase the rate at which the outputs from UK research are available on open access terms.

Members of the OAIG are: ARMA, Guild HE, JISC, PLoS, RCUK, RLUK, SCONUL, University of Edinburgh, The University of Salford, UCL, UUK and the Wellcome Trust.

For further information visit: http://open-access.org.uk

Read the reports in full

Rightscom/Matrix Evidence (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research Outputs to the public sector. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/575/

NCVO/OPM (2012) Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for voluntary and charitable sector organisations. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/576/

A third report in this series considers the benefits to the private sector of open access to scholarly research: HOST Policy Research (2011) Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research. Research report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group