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Scientific Publications: Free for all?

: Well, they come for free; unlike in Oxford, where nothing is free. The report, which was published in July 2004, received praise and criticism in almost equal measure for things that it did and did not say. Let me try to dispel a few myths by outlining what were, for me, some of the key recommendations. First, the Committee expressed support for institutional digital repositories with its recommendation that research councils and other Government funders should mandate the researchers who they fund to deposit a copy of their articles in an institutional repository within a reasonable period from the time of publication so that researchers would be able to research all UK-based repositories from one single site, with the Government acting as an advocate of those repositories at a global level in order to maximise their benefits. The second key recommendation was that the Government should support further experimentation with the author pays publishing model by, for example, making available a portion of research council grants for authors to experiment in that way. It also recommended that the Government should conduct research into the viability of that model, particularly into whether some of the unresolved problems with it can be overcome. A key justification for those recommendations—for me, one of the most compelling arguments for greater involvement with open access recommendations—was the potential for developing countries, which the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) mentioned. Institutions in many developing countries cannot hope to keep their researchers up to date with all relevant research by paying the necessary subscriptions. Free access on a global scale has huge attractions for the third world. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) wants to address that issue later. It is fair to say that the Government's response was curious. The hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) said so in press releases, though his language was perhaps more graphic than describing it as interesting. The report did not recommend the immediate and wholesale transition to the author pays model, but that appears to have been the common misconception, not least in the Government. Indeed, in a commentary in The Guardian of 9 November 2004 about the Government's response Richard Wray wrote:"““The government is, of course, within its rights to ignore select committees, but it could at least have properly read the report””." I think that that Committee did feel that the report had not been read properly. The Government's response of October 2004 seemed to argue against and reject the author pays model as if it was what the Committee proposed, when it palpably was not. In fact, the Committee report highlighted some problems with that model. One was the free-rider issue; the prospect of industry gaining free access to journals for which it currently pays. Another was the impact on learned societies that derive a significant proportion of their income from publishing journals that would be threatened by the new model. The rigour of peer review in the new model was unproven and there was also a question of the financial disadvantage that the UK would suffer internationally by making a unilateral commitment to the author pays model without getting international agreement. The Committee accepted that all those issues needed to be dealt with before any massive roll-out of and investment in the free access proposals. The Government's response was also negative in that it did nothing to support or co-ordinate the establishment of institutional repositories. The Government did not oppose them in principle and on page 27 of the 14th report it is noted that they recognised them as"““a significant development worthy of encouragement””." However, rather than take a co-ordinating role as the Committee suggested, the Government preferred to leave it to each institution to make its own decisions. Of course the recommendation relies on some central guidance. A laissez-faire approach, in which individual institutions have their own repositories, with no co-ordination, was a recipe that would not take us much further. Few authors, certainly, would be prepared to participate. By doing nothing the Government effectively rejected a key recommendation. An even more remarkable feature of the Government's response was their complacency about the state of scientific publishing in the UK. Their policy of"““facilitating a level playing field””" amounted to non-intervention in a market that many complained was already tilted against libraries and in favour of the major scientific publishers. It was that complacent response from the Government that prompted the Committee to take the relatively unusual step of publishing the Government's response with further comments in the 14th report of the 2003–04 session, published in November 2004. The Committee was not unduly concerned that the Government had rejected the thrust of the recommendations. There is nothing new in that, as I am sure you would vouch, Mrs. Dean. It was the way in which the response had been assembled that caused concern. Of course many different arms of Government fed into the response; the Department of Trade and Industry, the Office of Science and Technology, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education and Skills all had an interest. However, certain key voices seemed to be ignored, particularly that of the joint information systems committee, the Government-funded advisory body responsible for providing leadership in the innovative use of information and communications technology to support education and research. That very body, which should have been at the heart of the response, was initially left out. Indeed, the impression was given to the Committee that the voice of the DTI had overridden the advice of the relevant advisory bodies such as the joint information systems committee. It appeared to many that the DTI had done a good job of defending the interests of the successful UK publishing industry at the expense of innovation in the market that might benefit the wider academic community.