Opening Access – The Finch Report
Just a quickie this morning for those of you who have been following the debate about Open Access to academic research. Yesterday saw the publication of the Finch Report which was commissioned by David Willetts at the end of 2011. Here’s part of the opening paragraph of the announcement:
The report of the Working Group chaired by Dame Janet Finch published on 18 June recommends a programme of action to enable more people to read and use the publications arising from research. Better, faster communication of research results will bring benefits for public services and for economic growth. It will also bring improved efficiency for researchers, and opportunities for more public engagement with research.
Sounds promising. Even more promising is the following statement you can find in the summary:
The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable
However, it is a long report that also raises many difficulties, some real but many (in my opinion) imaginary. It will take a while to digest it and judge whether the momentum that seems to have been generated towards open access dissipates under pressure from the academic publishing industry, which has been lobbying vigorously in recent months. At first reading, however, I’m bound to say that it looks like a sell-out.
A particular worry is that the report favours the so-called “Gold” open access model in which authors pay up front to make their articles publicly available, rather than publishing them in journals to which access is restricted to subscribers. There’s a danger that this will simply provide the publishers with another way of profiteering and won’t save any money at all. In fact, as the Finch report says, phasing in such a system alongside the old one would cost an additional $50 million per year.
My favoured solution is to dispense with the academic journal racket altogether, and for researchers just to put their results on publicly accessible repositories, like the arXiv. Disciplines such as Physics and Astronomy could stop using journals immediately at no additional cost whatsoever, and with an enormous saving in library subscriptions. This option – the so-called “Green” Open Access – is favoured by most researchers but obviously not the academic publishing lobby. Of course this report could turn out to be an irrelevance, if UK researchers have the courage to go Green unilaterally.
I don’t really have time to do a full job on the Finch Report now, but fortunately you can find a number of commentaries already, including a blog piece by Stephen Curry, a piece by Alok Jha in the Grauniad, an item in the Times Higher, and an article on the BBC Website.
I feel I should also draw your attention to a related piece in the Daily Mail which, in a manner that’s typical for said organ, gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and proceeds to beat about the bush with it. At least it doesn’t claim that Open Access will have a devastating effect on house prices.
Anyway, I’m sure to return to this when I’ve had time to read the report thoroughly, but in the meantime please feel free to comment through the usual channel…
P.S. Let me also plug my recent piece on open access in the Guardian
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In the Dark 
June 19, 2012 at 10:11 am
I wonder if the next Daily Mail article will point out that open access might cause cancer?
June 19, 2012 at 11:30 am
I agree with your sentiment that the author-pays system is bad. I’m not sure I see the analogy to privatisation of the railways though!
June 19, 2012 at 1:53 pm
The railroads started off private, actually. But I wholeheartedly agree that author-pays is pernicious. Some publishers have tried to justify it by saying that it keeps subscriptions down for the 3rd world, but the arXiv is already available to the 3rd world for free.
Here’s an idea: it would not cost a lot to set up a website that mirrors all published science journals, ordered by journal, with hyperlinks to the arXiv versions of the papers published in each issue. If arXiv authors fill in a form stating when and where their preprints have been published then this website can be compiled from arXiv without transgressing publisher copyright on published tables-of-contents.
At that point, all that a university library need do is trust that the arXiv is maintained online and retain monthly CD-ROM copies of whatever is new at that website.
The effect would be a massive decline in university library subscriptions to journals. The present model of publishing would cease to be commercially viable; those in it for the money would clear off, and when the dust has settled people like AIP, IoP would remain as runners of online-only journals. Perhaps authors could be asked to pay a modest sum to cover administrative costs (eg editor’s time in soliciting referee’s reports), but nothing as big as today’s page charges. The website I have mentioned would remain in place, to keep the Learned Societies from temptations of profiteering.
And, of course, a LOT of money that currently goes in journal subscription would be freed for research.
June 19, 2012 at 1:55 pm
The best suggestion I know is to ask academic job applicants to provide copies of what they regard as their best four papers, whether refereed or not.
June 22, 2012 at 2:26 pm
A sociologist’s take on the open access debate. http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2012/05/open-access-%E2%80%93-but-not-for-authors/
November 12, 2012 at 2:15 pm
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