Regular teleconferences are taking place between a number of stakeholders to ensure that HEIs are receiving a coordinated and complete set of information about OA. Those involved are the Research Information Network (RIN) and members of the OAIG, including Jisc, SCONUL, UUK, RLUK, ARMA and the University of Salford. This is a summary of the most recent teleconference.

The Finch Group will reconvene in mid September. RIN is doing some preparatory work gathering the views of stakeholders with respect to the Finch Report’s recommendations and associated actions – on what they’ve done, what their plans are, what others have done that has affected them, and what remains to be done. This is not about re-opening the debates on OA, or about monitoring progress toward OA.

However, work is needed to monitor progress toward OA, and the Publishers’ Association and OAIG members RLUK, Jisc, the Wellcome Trust and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have agreed to fund a project to reach consensus on the indicators that would be a fair reflection of that progress and its implications.

The Research Councils are aware of the need for some details soon on the data that will be expected from HEIs to monitor progress toward compliance, and inform the 2014 review. It is not yet clear whether the basic level of information provided to the Research Outcomes Service / ResearchFish will be sufficient, or whether more will be needed. The work noted above will help inform that by identifying how easy it is for HEIs to generate data of various kinds. In the future, there might be a relationship between such data collections and the Higher Education Data and Information Improvement Programme.

More immediately, the Research Councils have commissioned RIN to work with a group of HEIs to identify and share good practices in implementing OA. This is progressing well; HEIs have signed up, an interview has been schedule drafted, and an advisory group set up. Contact Michael Jubb michael.jubb@researchinfonet.org. SCONUL is commissioning a briefing document on OA for SCONUL directors, which should be ready end of May. The work will coordinate with that of RIN. Contact Kitty Inglis k.inglis@sussex.ac.uk. Jisc also intends, on behalf of OAIG, to support complementary work to RIN’s on providing guidance and case study material to HEIs on implementing OA.

There are a number of initiatives around Creative Commons (CC) licences:

• The Wellcome Trust is organising a meeting on CC-BY adoption in the HSS subjects, 24^th April, with some of the major stakeholders.
• PLoS (with some Jisc support) is commissioning an authoritative factual guide to CC-BY from a leading expert in the field.
• Members of OAIG plus RIN have suggestedroposed work to advise HEIs on the various licence options and the various sources of information on them.

The Jisc APC pilot has had almost overwhelming interest from HEIs wanting to participate. It launched on 1^st April, and it is likely to generate data that is highly relevant to OA monitoring.

The Sherpa FACT service was launched on 1^st April and an API is planned. It is likely to need updating as publishers release revised policies. There is anecdotal evidence that publisher engagement with the Sherpa RoMEO service is increasing.

The OAIG and RIN have also suggested work on disciplinary differences and their impact on OA adoption, which will be discussed further.

The next call is scheduled for 17^th April, 0930.

OAIG met on 5^th April and considered some of this work. A summary of that meeting will be posted here shortly.

As a response to the Finch report, the UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) examines how intermediaries could help manage the impact an increase in the volumes of open access article processing charges (APCs) could have for universities, funders and publishers.

The implementation of the Finch report and new polices from Research Councils will result in vastly increased volumes of open access publishing in the UK, and in payments of article processing charges (APCs). The “The Potential Role for Intermediaries in Managing the Payment of Open Access Article Processing Charges” report reveals an almost universal consensus that work is required to develop and implement standards to facilitate more effective flows between authors, publishers, universities and funders of information relating to the payment of article processing charges (APCs) – the charges levied by some publishers of open access and hybrid journals to meet the costs of the publication process.

Phil Sykes, university librarian at University of Liverpool, who is a member of OAIG comments: “Institutional leaders, research managers and library directors need to make significant decisions in the next few months, following the Finch Report.  This report explores one important potential solution, an intermediary to save time and effort in transactions between publishers and institutions.  Now that this excellent report has explored this solution and the issues around it, we are in a much better position to initiate joint action within the HE sector and beyond.”

The report spells out what each group considers as the, important elements necessary to create an efficient and effective gold open access market. These include:

• Scalability
• Low Transaction costs
• Effective Interfaces
• Appropriate Management of information
• Consistency in metadata

The report then outlines a range of potential services that could be provided including:

• Core services relating to the payment transactions
• Value-added services, such as analytical services, negotiations,
• Roles around metadata and user awareness.

It later sets out a series of options for how intermediaries might then provide these services.

“JISC looks forward to playing a leading role in the implementation and investigation of this work,” says Neil Jacobs, programme manager at JISC. “We want to ensure that the gold open access market is efficient, effective and transparent, for the benefit of UK higher education and research, and wider society.”

According to the report, researchers at a large Russell Group university such as Manchester published 5-6,000 articles and conference proceedings in 2011. Assuming that it takes an average of 60 minutes to make typical APC payment, the workload for handling this number of publications a year would amount to more than a full time post. Yet, according to this new research, only a small number of universities so far have systematic processes in place to manage the workflows of paying for their papers to be published in open access journals. The complex or inefficient processes currently associated with the payment of APCs could present a significant barrier to the wider adoption of open access publishing.

This OAIG report, ‘The Potential Role for Intermediaries in Managing the Payment of Open Access Article Processing Charges’, was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust and JISC on behalf of the OAIG, and was written by the Research Information Network (RIN).  It involved working with a range of universities, funders, publishers and other stakeholders, demonstrating a clear common purpose in UK toward gold open access.

Download the report (725k PDF).

-Ends-

Contact: Charlie Covington, press officer, JISC, 07841951296, c.covington@jisc.ac.uk

Notes to editors

Where does this report come from?

This report is a fully collaborative project between representatives of all the stakeholders in scholarly publishing. JISC and the Wellcome Trust, on behalf of OAIG, commissioned RIN (who have unrivalled expertise in this area) to do the work, and collaborated with publishers, research managers and others in seeing it done.

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. Gold open access is the publication of research in open access or hybrid journals. 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.

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 the OAIG website.

Finch report

The Finch report of June 2012 was commissioned by the Government to consider how the UK could make the scientific research funded by taxpayers available free of charge while maintaining high standards of peer review and without undermining the UK’s publishing industry. It states that there has been a significant shift in policy towards funding open access publishing with APCs.

A guide to good practice for university open-access (OA) policies has been launched by Harvard University, during International Open Access Week 2012. It’s has been created due to a recommendation from the ten-year anniversary statement of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which suggests that funders and institutions should develop policies considering OA policies. The guide also provides guidance on what these policies should cover and aspire to.

The guide includes recommendations that should be useful to institutions whatever approach is taken to OA. The resource is a detailed guide to what is practical when developing an institutional policy for open access, (that is, a policy requiring researchers at a particular university to make their published research outputs OA), including, what works, and why. It covers a wide range of policy types, and offers information and guidance on the pros and cons of each.  It has been drawn up with reference to real policies from around the world, and their effectiveness.

Neil Jacobs, from the UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) says: “This is the most detailed guide available, and goes through most of the questions that might be raised within an institution introducing an open access policy. The guide goes a step further by looking in depth at issues raised by the OAIG resource on publications policies for open access materials. It is the best resource for those needing to make sure that their institutional policy will meet the individual needs of their institution.”

Neil continues: “OAIG is one of a number of bodies around the world that has endorsed the resource.  We would encourage those who have developed OA policies in UK institutions to contribute suggestions to the resource to ensure that it fully reflects some of the excellent policies and good practice in the UK.”

The guide is designed to evolve and will be revised and expand over time, building on Harvard’s experience and the experience of others around the world.

The guidance is aimed at institutions considering an OA policy, and to faculty, students, librarians, and administrators who would like their institution to start considering one.  It complements the JISC Repositories Support Project guidance, which is specifically for repositories dealing with open access materials.

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