WHY AND HOW JISC IS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS

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WHY AND HOW JISC IS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS

• Frederick J. Friend
• JISC Consultant
• OSI Open Access Advocate
• Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
• f.friend_at_ucl.ac.uk

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WHY JISC IS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS

• One route to improvement in access through
  negotiation of big deals
• This route partially effective but many
  difficulties e.g. long negotiations, small
  publishers not included, cost too high
• Push for open access coming both because of
  problems with big deals and because of
  developments in research communication and
  institutional information strategies
• Open access not just a new business model but
  part of a new way of meeting research and
  teaching needs, treating dissemination as
  integral to research
• For research funding agencies, greater use and
  exploitation of research results resulting from a
  higher number of readers, facilitating further
  research.
• For the author, increased readership and more
  citations, as academic content on open web-sites
  is read more widely than content on closed
  web-sites.
• For universities and colleges, more publicity for
  the research conducted at the institution and
  higher citation of research papers.
• For readers of research papers, access to
  research publications without barriers imposed by
  subscription or access-prevention technology.
• For the UK Government, greater returns from
  investment in the funding of research as research
  publications are used more widely. This can
  contribute to the publics understanding of
  science.

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HOW JISC IS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS

• Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR)
  Programme www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_fair.html -
  fourteen projects August 2002 October 2005
• New Digital Repositories Programme just starting
  http//www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?nameprogramme_dig
  ital_repositories (N.B. all types of academic
  content and repositories)
• National deal for any UK author to submit to
  BioMed Central open access journals - very
  successful (many submissions, fair rejection rate
  and good publicity) in first year so extended for
  a second year
• March 2004-February 2005 four publishers funded
  to cover OA publication-charges, each with
  different business model
• Aim to ease the transition from subscription to
  open access for publishers willing to trial OA
• In second round of funding five grants made to
  publishers and more publishers will be invited to
  bid for 2006-07
• Various surveys and studies funded in order to
  understand the complex environment better and to
  assist the process of change