Research Councils UK: Open Access Policy (S&T Report)

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee and participated in this short inquiry. I would like to thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for initiating this inquiry, which I think has been extremely timely. As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned, we have already seen some reaction, both from the research councils and from HEFCE, regarding the clarification of their own positions. They have made it clearer that they regard the process of moving to open access as a journey rather than as a one-off, rather disruptive movement.

The report of the working group chaired by Dame Janet Finch was extremely good. It emphasised to a very considerable degree this process of a journey. It noted that it would take time for the world to move towards open access. It said that there was already a very considerable momentum behind that movement, particularly in the world of science journals, but it would be a journey over time. During that period—and indeed for a very considerable time to come—some journals would be published under the gold open-access route and some published under the green open-access route. Under that route, after a period of time, the articles would be placed in a repository and would become available for open access, but with the requirement of an embargo period. Some journals would operate under a hybrid scheme, whereby you could pay upfront to access journals through open access, but the journal would also publish articles for which there was no upfront payment. Those would be put behind a paywall and would be accessible only behind that paywall.

This would mean that, at least in the short run and probably over some period of time, universities would be confronted by a situation in which their libraries would have to continue purchasing the journals concerned as not everybody would be able to use the open access system. Universities would have to pay for their own researchers to make the upfront payment—partly through the research councils or through funders such as Wellcome—if they decided on full gold open access. At the same time they would also have to pay to purchase the journals.

We should bear in mind that the UK publishes only some 6% of the world’s scientific output. Ninety-four per cent of the world’s scientific output comes from other countries. The arguments for gold open access, which in many senses is the best of all worlds—we all acknowledge that it is a very good route to go down—are somewhat similar to the arguments for free trade. If we all indulge in free trade there are very considerable benefits to everybody concerned. On the other hand, if a country moves to open up its markets without other countries also pursuing a free-trade route, then essentially its markets are open to competition but other countries retain protectionism and do not open up their markets. That is a very unsatisfactory situation. It is why the process of opening up towards free trade has been a very long one involving multinational negotiation. The rounds under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and subsequently under WTO took a very long time. Countries sat around the table and essentially traded off particular aspects.

That is not fully taking place in the world of open access. Which way journals are going and which way countries are going is rather arbitrary. As a result of this, we in Britain will be in danger if we move too fast. It is quite clear that the initiative came from BIS. The Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, was very anxious that we should be the first mover here and that we should to some extent use this to try to kick-start the multinational process that is moving but needs to be accelerated. There is a danger that we will open up our science to access from the rest of the world without the rest of the world opening up theirs to us.

There is a need to consider the time taken here. There is also a need to monitor what is happening and how far the rest of the world is moving. The diagram on page 13 of our report shows that most countries are very much still using the green-gold hybrid system. More countries are going down the green route than the gold route. It is not yet clear that the general move will be towards gold open access. Green open access is a very real option and it is an alternative. There is therefore a need to monitor what other countries do over the course of time and a need for some form of cost benefit analysis.

Partly because I come from a social science background, I have been extremely concerned about the position of the learned societies. They have faced difficulties in relation to the process, both in terms of time and in terms of the preference for gold open access. It is quite clear that many of these societies exist by subscription, but 80% or 90% of their subscriptions come from overseas subscribers. Regarding access to these journal articles without having to pay a subscription, in the social sciences and the humanities you very often have to wait two years for an article to be published. To have to wait another 12 months for others to access it means very little. The consequence is that for many of these learned societies the whole process of publication is not viable. This raises very important issues which need to be considered. As I say, I am delighted with the reaction we have already had from the research councils and from HEFCE. I look forward to seeing further moves in this direction.