UK BIS Committee 2013 Report on Open Access

[Stevan Harnad]

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<http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-innovation-and-skills/news/publ-open-access/>
*

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].
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