RCUK Drops the Ball?

The UK -- which had the undisputed leadership of the world in setting Open Access policy -- may now be losing that lead, allowing itself instead to get needlessly side-tracked and bogged down in irrelevant diversions and digressions, designed solely to delay the optimal and inevitable (and obvious, and already long overdue).

Peter Suber's comments (quoted below) are spot-on, and say it all. The ball, already fumbled by NIH in the US and perhaps now by the RCUK in the UK too, will now pass to the European Commission and -- more importantly -- to the distributed network of individual universities and other research institutions worldwide. The leaders now are the institutions that have not sat waiting for national funder mandates in order to go ahead and mandate OA self-archiving, but have already gone ahead and mandated it themselves, for their own institutions.

What we should remind ourselves is that if the physics community -- way back in 1991, and the computer science community from even earlier -- had been foolish enough to wait for the outcome of the kind of vague, open-ended study now planned by RCUK with RIN, instead of going ahead and self-archiving their research, we would have lost 500,000 (physics) plus 750,000 (computer science) OA articles'-worth of research access, usage and impact for the past decade and a half.

The Wellcome Trust has had the vision and good sense to go ahead and mandate what had already empirically demonstrated its positive benefits for research with no negative effects on publishing on the basis of 15+ years worth of objective evidence.

The RCUK seems to prefer endless open-ended dithering...

--Your-Impatient-Archivangelist

---

Excerpted from Peter Suber's Open Access News:

The RCUK has announced an Analysis of data on scholarly journals publishing to be undertaken jointly with the RIN (Research Information Network) and DTI (Department of Trade and Industry).

Comments by Peter Suber:

"(1) The RCUK has not said whether it will wait to announce the final version of its OA policy until the new study is complete and fully digested. But it looks as though it will. It looks as though the voices calling for delay have prevailed.

"(2) Remember that the RCUK's draft OA policy is already based on extensive fact-finding from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and summarised in its well-known report, "Scientific Publications: Free For All?".

"(3) The only relevant evidence not yet unearthed by previous studies is on the effect of high-volume OA archiving on journal subscriptions -- outside physics, where we already know that high-volume OA archiving is either harmless or synergistic with journal subscriptions. But we cannot gather evidence on this question until we stimulate high-volume OA archiving in a field other than physics, e.g. by adopting a policy something like the RCUK's draft OA policy. Let's get on with it, adopt the policy, monitor the effects carefully, and be prepared to amend as needed.

"(4) Why does the list of "all the key stakeholders" omit researchers and universities?"

-- Peter Suber OA News

---

Excerpts from RCUK announcement:

"This study got off the ground in mid-April 2006 and should conclude by the middle of summer. It is being undertaken on behalf of the three joint funders by Electronic Publishing Services Ltd (EPS), in association with Loughborough University Department of Information Science. The aim is to assist in UK domestic policy-making, by reviewing information about scholarly journal publishing, assessing the data available about the process and the reliability of that data.

"The main purpose of the study is to gain more reliable information about the operation of the journal publishing aspects of the scholarly communications process and its costs. The study focuses specifically on journal publishing, but it should be viewed in the context of a projected body of work involving all key stakeholders in the context of the scholarly communications framework. This is likely to include related but separate studies of other aspects of scholarly communications, including for instance the development, funding and viability of digital repositories.

"The key objective of the project is to provide the three sponsors of the study, and other stakeholders in the scholarly journals industry, with an accurate review of reliable and objective information about the journals publishing process....

"Scholarly journal publishing is a key component of the spectrum of functions and activities that form part of the scholarly communications process. This has been the focus of much interest lately, in particular because of the considerable interest generated by recent debates on open access. Although this level of debate has provided a welcome opportunity to consider challenges relating to the dissemination of research outputs, it has also been characterised by a degree of mutual suspicion and misunderstanding stemming from the often conflicting positions of the different actors and stakeholders with an interest in these issues. There has also been tension over the quality and completeness of the information and data that the different stakeholders have used in support of their respective positions. As a result of these tensions and suspicions, it has been difficult to achieve a consensus on how best to exploit the potential of new technology for enhancing the scholarly communications process and its cost-effectiveness. This has had implications for the development of public policy, as evidenced by the debates surrounding the Wellcome Trust's policy on open access, and the delay in agreeing a definitive RCUK position statement.

"In this context, there is a clear need for objective information that all stakeholders can agree upon as a means of defining and achieving common goals in scholarly communications. The DTI-sponsored Research Communications Forum has provided a useful arena for the exchange of information and views. The recently-created scholarly communications group facilitated by the RIN will work collaboratively to identify key issues in scholarly communications and gaps in our understanding, and to develop a better, evidence-based understanding of these issues - for instance, the development, funding and viability of digital repositories - as a basis for informing public policy. This group includes representatives of all the key stakeholders (notably the Research Councils, the library community, publishers, the RIN and key Government Departments such as the DTI and OST). The current study, focused on scholarly journal publishing - which has been the focus of some of the more lively debate - will be timely contribution to the development of understanding in the field of scholarly communications as a whole."