Open Access News

Learned societies have warned that the open access policy proposed by Research Councils UK this summer threatens to close journals and deprive societies of income for grants and other research activity. RCUK proposed, in June, that researchers funded by the research councils should be required to place resulting articles in either institutional or disciplinary repositories after a delay agreed with the publisher. Although the policy respects copyright, publishers are concerned that the large amount of information in repositories will mean libraries will not need journal subscriptions....Sally Morris, chief executive of ALPSP, told Research Fortnight researchers will not always respect embargo periods for journals, and that RCUK is “suggesting strongly to authors that it will be endeavouring to persuade publishers to reduce or eliminate them”. “At the very least we would want them to come out much more clearly and strongly in support of whatever embargo a publisher finds necessary to defend its journal,” Morris said. The Institute of Physics has already seen article downloads from its site diminish for journals whose content is substantially replicated in a repository, says ALPSP. Advocates of the open access model have criticised the learned societies’ stance, arguing repositories have been delayed long enough. Stevan Harnad from the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and a member the group who submitted a response to RCUK, said last week that there was already a “peaceful co-existence” between societies and the self-archiving research community in physics. But even if self-archiving does cause cancellations of journal subscriptions, it should be done regardless, he says. “Research is being done for the sake of research impact and progress, not for the sake of earning revenue for publishers, whether learned societies or not,” he said. Universities UK, which represents all the country’s universities, is supporting moves towards open access....RCUK is analysing responses and will be talking with learned societies, universities and libraries before it makes its final decision on repositories next year.