Open Access News

The Debate held on 15 December in the UK Parliament on the Report on Scientific Publications by the Science and Technology Committee (HC399) was disappointing and depressing. Disappointing because so many of the old myths about open access re-surfaced and depressing because the Junior Minister present took 20 minutes to say that the UK Government intends to do nothing. Nine Members of Parliament attended the Debate, not a large number but par for the course for a supposedly non-controversial topic. The full three hours allocated were used, and one disappointing feature was that (subjectively) around 85% of the time was spent on open access publishing, only about 10% on open repositories, and about 5% on trivia such as the fact that one MP has published in "Nature" while another has only published in Royal Society of Chemistry journals....The HC399 Report is a great tribute to the quality of the UK parliamentary system; the Debate on the Report did not live up to the quality of the Report.

The Debate opened well with the best speech of the afternoon from Phil Willis MP, the new Chair of the Science and Technology Committee. He outlined the Committee's work on scientific publications, accurately identifying the key points in the HC399 Report, noting that the Government had ignored the advice from JISC in their Response to the Report, and laying down some questions for the Minister to answer at the end of the Debate. Three Members who signed off last year's Report spoke: Ian Gibson MP, Brian Iddon MP, and Evan Harris MP. They did support the Report's recommendations but with more qualifications than they expressed last year, and certainly they did not speak with the kind of passion necessary to make the Government take any notice of their words. For example, Evan Harris MP mentioned the information obtained by David Prosser about Lord Sainsbury's meetings regarding scientific publications, the kind of information which MPs would use to go for the Government jugular on other topics, but the information was only mentioned in passing and not commented on by anybody else. Brian Iddon MP said that he thought the RCUK policy would "incentivise" deposit in repositories, and pointed to the need to develop tools for the world-wide searching of repositories, but said that RCUK were already reaching agreement with publishers on embargo periods of 6 or 12 months. Evan Harris MP said that he had doubts about the "headlong rush" into repositories when no quality kitemarks were present.

Two Members of Parliament spoke almost entirely about open access journals. Edward Vaizey MP for Wantage gave a speech that sounded as though it was written for him by an Oxford publisher. He spoke of the threats to the jobs of many of his Oxfordshire constituents from open access publishing, made a number of dubious statements (e.g. that only 3% of research publications arise from government funding), cast doubts upon the quality of open access journals, and said that Government should not "nationalise" research by intervening in the publications market. Charles Hendry MP (background in public relations) also said that the Government should not interfere because the publications market is working well. He listed the "benefits" in the present system, amongst which was the fact that copyright is protected, and his speech was full of quotes from the recent Royal Society statement.

Finally there was 20 minutes left for the Government to reply in the person of Barry Gardiner MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Competitiveness at the DTI. He followed the existing Government line on the need for a "level playing-field". He did say that funders should be able to provide open access publications charges to authors if they requested it, but later appeared to go back on that statement. He spoke of the benefits of repositories for long-term archiving but said that each institution has to make its own decisions. He ducked a question from Phil Willis MP about the need for Government to encourage the linking of repository content....And he also ducked a question on the importance of Government action to support the communication of UK research to developing countries through open access, another theme which came up at various points in the afternoon and one of many serious issues on which the Debate resulted in a sense of disappointment.