One brief comment below on this otherwise very useful posting to the Chartered Library and Information Professionals list. -- SH
> -----Original Message----- > From: Chartered Library and Information Professionals > [Posted On Behalf Of Prof Bruce Royan] > Sent: 11 January 2004 14:42 > To: lis-ci...@jiscmail.ac.uk > Subject: Re: UK Select Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publication > > I agree with Ian Johnson that CILIP need to produce a submission on this: > I'd be surprised if they do not. I see it as a possibly unique opportunity > for Librarians to influence a radical shift in the way access is provided to > research findings. I've mobilised my MP (who happens to be a DTI Minister) > to write in, but first I had to brief him on the basic arguments for the > need for this. The notice in the committe is below: > http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_and_technology_committee/scitech111203a.cfm > > It strikes me that the briefing I gave to him, might be helpful to one or > two LIS-CILIP folk, so i've reproduced it below. It draws heavily on the guy > I take to be the guru on these matters, Stevan Harnad, though any errors are > my own: > > - Publicly funded researchers in the UK, publish their findings so that > other reseachers, anywhere in the world, can access them, challenge them and > use them as the basis of further research. This process of "scholarly > communication" reduces duplicated effort, ensures quality, and increases the > productivity of research and development. > > - Traditionally, research is published in peer-reviewed journals. About > 2,500,000 articles per year, in some 24,000 journals. > > - The authors of these articles don't expect royalties or fees for them: > their reward is in recognition of their research ("visibility" or "impact"). > > - Traditionally, publishers of these journals have covered the peer-review > and other production costs by charging subscriptions for the paper journal > issues. Universities and research institutions bought subscriptions (often > with public money) so that their own researchers could access and use the > peer-reviewed research output of others. This approach has come to be > described as "toll-access". > > -But even the richest institution has only ever been able to afford a > fraction of the 24,000 journals published, and this is rapidly reducing as > the price of journals continues to outstrip inflation. The majority of > potential users of any research article are denied access, and much of its > research impact is lost. > > -The rise of Web technology, by radically reducing the basic technical > costs of access to information, has higlighted the prospect of a new > paradigm in scholarly communication, where access to research results would > be made freely available to any interested researcher. This would maximise > the impact of any piece of research, and thus the productivity of the whole > research process. This approach is known as "open-access". > > -A new type of publication has arisen which uses this approach. > Open-access journals are freely available to users, as they recover their > peer-review and other production costs from the institutions whose > researchers contribute the research articles themeselves. This approach is > strongly to be encouraged, but currently accounts for only about 5% of total > research output. > > -The remaining 95% continues to be published in "toll-access" journals. > However, an increasing number of research organisations worldwide are > setting up "open-access" websites on which their researchers can > "self-archive" full copies of the articles that have been contributed to > "toll-access" journals, so that their research results can be widely > available and acheive the greatest possible impact. > > -Fifty-five percent of journals already officially support this author > self-archiving. Many of the remaining 45% will agree if asked. Government > should do whatever is in its power to persuade all UK publishers to support > self-archiving and all research institutions to set up open access archives. > > -Although a substantial proportion of the publishing community may be > expected to lobby in favour of the status quo, I think this prediction either contradicts the prior passage (that at least 55% of journals already support self-archiving) or it gives the incorrect impression that to support the status quo regarding the toll-access cost-recovery model is to oppose self-archiving! This is not the case either. "Green" publishers may support the status quo insofar as cost-recovery is concerned, but may still support open-access insofar as self-archiving is concerned! This is a *very* important distinction that needs to be made very explicit: "The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html I would suggest: " -Although a substantial proportion of the publishing community may be expected to lobby in favour of the status quo insofar as their cost-recovery model is concerned... > there is little evidence that > "open-access" archiving damages sales of "toll-acess" journals: it simply > increases the readership of research, far beyond the institutions that can > afford to buy subscriptions. Extension to all research institutions and the > contents of all journals would lead to more efficient use of public money in > both research grants and university library budgets, and incidentally do a > great deal to bridge the divide between the information-rich countries and > the developing world. > > [posted by Prof Bruce Royan] > the guru on these matters More like the burro on this matters -- doing the donkey work of replying to the same questions over and over for yonks... http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#31-worries Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum: To join the Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Hypermail Archive: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php