{"id":1327,"date":"2012-02-21T23:54:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T23:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=1327"},"modified":"2012-02-21T23:54:09","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T23:54:09","slug":"an-open-letter-on-open-access-to-uk-research-councils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2012\/02\/21\/an-open-letter-on-open-access-to-uk-research-councils\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter on Open Access to UK Research Councils"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Short Version<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Please read the Wellcome Trust\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wellcome.ac.uk\/About-us\/Policy\/Policy-and-position-statements\/WTD002766.htm\">policy<\/a> on open access. And then adopt it. Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Long Version<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Please read the Wellcome Trust\u2019s policy on open access. It&#8217;s short so I&#8217;ve pasted it below. The policy states (with my emphases in <span style=\"color: #993366;\">purple<\/span>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The mission of the Wellcome Trust is to support the brightest minds* in biomedical research and the medical humanities.<\/p>\n<p>The main output of this research is new ideas and knowledge, which the Trust expects its researchers to publish in <span style=\"color: #993366;\">high-quality, peer-reviewed<\/span> journals.<\/p>\n<p>The Wellcome Trust believes that <span style=\"color: #993366;\">maximising the distribution of these papers &#8211; by providing free, online access &#8211; is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Wellcome Trust therefore <span style=\"color: #993366;\">supports unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission<\/span> and <span style=\"color: #993366;\">a public benefit<\/span> to be encouraged wherever possible.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the Wellcome Trust:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc;\">\n<li>expects authors of research papers to <span style=\"color: #993366;\">maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free<\/span><\/li>\n<li>requires <span style=\"color: #993366;\">electronic copies<\/span> of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by Wellcome Trust funding, to be made available through PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as soon as possible and in any event within six months of the journal publisher&#8217;s official date of final publication<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #993366;\">will provide grant holders with additional funding<\/span>, through their institutions, to cover open access charges, where appropriate, <span style=\"color: #993366;\">in order to meet the Trust&#8217;s requirements<\/span><\/li>\n<li>encourages &#8211; and where it pays an open access fee, requires &#8211; authors and publishers to license research papers such that they may be <span style=\"color: #993366;\">freely copied and re-used (for example for text and data-mining purposes)<\/span>, provided that such uses are fully attributed<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #993366;\">affirms the principle that it is the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author&#8217;s work is published, that should be considered in making funding decisions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As a policy it is clear and purposeful. It is built upon the principle that OA is good for science and good for the public. The policy is backed by funding that is available to Trust-funded researchers even after their grant support has finished. And, most pleasingly of all, although there is an expectation that the scientists it funds should publish in \u2018high-quality\u2019 journals, at the same time the Trust makes it clear that chasing after impact factors is not the point \u2014\u00a0there is a commitment in its funding decisions to judge work on its merit. If this goal can be realised, it will break one of the heaviest chains tying scientists to the <em>status quo<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Now contrast the Wellcome Trust\u2019s statement with a typical open access policy, say the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbsrc.ac.uk\/organisation\/policies\/position\/policy\/access-research-outputs.aspx\">one from the BBSRC<\/a> (the funder that I am most familiar with &#8211; but the MRC policy looks rather similar). If you click on the link you will be taken to a web-page that contains two small PDFs. Each contains just a few paragraphs of text. The first is an initial statement from June 2006 of their OA policy and the second is an update that was published in late 2008. The organisation of these texts is a bit haphazard \u2014 and so are the declared aims.<\/p>\n<p>In my view neither document has the drive or focus of the Wellcome Trust\u2019s policy. The aim is to \u2018encourage\u2019, rather than oblige. The financial support on offer is more limited and more difficult to <em>access <\/em>(no pun intended but it <em>is<\/em> ironic). As outlined in the notes for BBSRC applicants (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbsrc.ac.uk\/web\/FILES\/Guidelines\/grants_guide.pdf\">PDF<\/a>), OA charges expected within the term of the grant should be put down as direct costs. Those expected after the end of the grant term should be charged to the overheads paid to the university holding the grant. Good luck with forecasting your need for OA funding accurately. This system is complex and it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n<p>As a case in point, consider my most recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/structure\/abstract\/S0969-2126(11)00333-9\">paper<\/a>, submitted to the Elsevier journal <em>Structure. <\/em>Since the work had been funded by the BBSRC, that meant I had to pay <em>Structure\u2019s<\/em> $5000 OA fee. Yes, $5000. I know. But the grant had finished between submission and acceptance so the BBSRC told me funds to cover that charge should be provided by my institution from the fEC payment (the overhead). My institution informed me this money was spent and when I relayed this to the BBSRC, I was instructed to take the green OA option \u2014\u00a0self-archive my version of the revised, peer-reviewed manuscript (not the <em>Structure<\/em> reprint). This is very much a second best option. I have put the PDF on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bio.ph.ic.ac.uk\/~scurry\/SC_pubs.html\">personal web-site<\/a> and in my institution&#8217;s depository (<a href=\"http:\/\/spiral.imperial.ac.uk\/\">Spiral<\/a>) but am not allowed by Elsevier\u2019s terms and conditions to upload my paper to <a href=\"http:\/\/ukpmc.ac.uk\/\">UKPMC<\/a>, where it would be <em>much easier<\/em> for the user community to find.<\/p>\n<p>This was, in my view, an avoidable shambles, brought on by the combination of Elsevier\u2019s high OA charge (at least for its Cell Press titles) and the Research Council\u2019s lack of a proper funding mechanism.<\/p>\n<p>But change is afoot, albeit slowly. In May last year, Science Minister David Willetts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rcuk.ac.uk\/media\/news\/2011news\/Pages\/110525_1.aspx\">announced<\/a> a renewed commitment to OA, to be implemented by Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). This intention was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/science\/2011\/dec\/08\/publicly-funded-research-open-access\">reaffirmed<\/a> in December upon publication of the government\u2019s \u201cInnovation and Research Strategy for Growth\u201d document (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bis.gov.uk\/assets\/biscore\/innovation\/docs\/i\/11-1387-innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf\">PDF<\/a>). This states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe Government, in line with our overarching commitment to transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that publicly-funded research should be accessible free of charge. Free and open access to taxpayer-funded research offers significant social and economic benefits by spreading knowledge, raising the prestige of UK research and encouraging technology transfer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well that&#8217;s good. However, the document also revealed plans to establish \u201can independent working group chaired by Janet Finch to consider how to improve access to research publications, including publicly-funded research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear to me why this is necessary. In a 2009 report (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rcuk.ac.uk\/Publications\/archive\/Pages\/Independent.aspx\">PDF<\/a>) RCUK had already identified the main obstacles to the wider adoption of OA:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>a perception amongst many disciplines that OA journals lack impact<\/li>\n<li>limited awareness amongst researchers of funding sources for pay-to-publish models<\/li>\n<li>non-compliance with institutional policies which mandate self-archiving in institutional repositories.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The first of these points would be addressed by adoption of a statement identical to that in the Wellcome Trust policy, \u00a0providing proper funding to show that OA matters and, crucially, emphasising that the Research Councils would base funding decisions on quality, not impact factors (though this would have to be backed by similar expressions by promotion panels in universities). The two remaining difficulties could be dealt with by stipulating that researchers who did not comply would soon find themselves ineligible for grant funding. Such a position would increase the awareness and compliance of scientists. I guarantee it.<\/p>\n<p>The RCUK report even made the point that the push for Gold OA \u2014 publication in OA journals that do not charge subscription fees \u2014\u00a0could still permit commercial publishers to make a decent living, though perhaps not an exorbitant one, as is the case at present for the major publishing companies. The drive for OA engendered by a proper policy, seems likely to stimulate greater interest among scientists in OA enterprises like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plos.org\/\">PLoS<\/a> and could <em>even<\/em> enhance the marketplace by creating some real competition and so driving down costs.<\/p>\n<p>So please adopt the Wellcome trust policy on Open Access. Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13px;\">*Brightest minds &#8211; alas the Wellcome Trust doesn&#8217;t get everything right. Their funding policy means concentrating their resources in fewer hands, choking off a mixed economy of research funding that has worked well and is better able to sustain university-based research (as I have written <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2011\/01\/24\/the-shove-that-dare-not-speak-its-name\/\">elsewhere<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short Version Please read the Wellcome Trust\u2019s policy on open access. And then adopt it. Thank you. &nbsp; Long Version Please read the Wellcome Trust\u2019s policy on open access. It&#8217;s short so I&#8217;ve pasted it below. The policy states (with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2012\/02\/21\/an-open-letter-on-open-access-to-uk-research-councils\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,6,107],"tags":[163,162,146,145,161,160],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access-2","category-science","category-scientific-life","tag-academic-publishing","tag-bbsrc","tag-elsevier","tag-open-access","tag-rcuk","tag-wellcome-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}