UK BIS Committee 2013 Report on Open Access

Business, Innovation and Skills Committee Select Committee
Announcement No.21
Monday 9 September 2013

NEW REPORT: Open Access: achieving a functional market
Under strict embargo until 00.01 BST on Tuesday 10 September

Government mistaken in focusing on Gold as route to full open access, says Committee

The Government’s commitment to increasing access to published research findings, and its desire to achieve full open access, are welcome, says the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in a Report published today. However, whilst Gold open access is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully open access world is a mistake, says the Report.

The Report calls on the Government and RCUK to reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access.

The Report recommends that:

• the Government should take an active role in promoting standardisation and compliance across subject and institutional repositories [paragraph 25].

• RCUK should reinstate and strengthen the immediate deposit mandate in its original policy and improve the monitoring and enforcement of mandated deposit [paragraph 31].

• the Government and RCUK should revise their policies to place an upper limit of 6 month embargoes on STEM subject research and up to 12 month embargoes for HASS subject research [paragraph 50].

• the Government should mitigate against the impact on universities of paying Article Processing Charges out of their own reserves [paragraph 64].

• if the preference for Gold is maintained, the Government and RCUK should amend their policies so that APCs are only paid to publishers of pure Gold rather than hybrid journals to eliminate the risk of double-dipping [paragraph 77].