<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV>Four weeks ago I posted a message to this list expressing concern that the
prospects for a substantial growth in OA content have been damaged by the
renewal of many “big deals”, keeping money in the toll-access market which could
have been used to increase funds available to authors to pay OA publication
charges for publication in OA journals. That concern remains, but UK hopes for a
big increase in OA have been raised by a UK Government policy statement issued
yesterday and available at <A
href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/innovation/innovating-for-growth"><FONT
color=#0000ff><U>http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/innovation/innovating-for-growth</U></FONT></A>
.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The policy statement is about “Innovation and Research Strategy for
Growth”, which is exactly where a commitment to OA belongs. The statement makes
several important commitments:</DIV>
<DIV>Para 6.6: “The Government, in line with our overarching commitment to
transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that publicly-funded
research should be accessible free of charge.”</DIV>
<DIV>Para 6.7: “There are many successful international examples of open access
research. At Harvard, academics often grant the university a non-exclusive
irrevocable right to distribute their scholarly output for non-commercial use.
Their articles are then stored, preserved and made freely available through the
Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH).”</DIV>
<DIV>Para 6.8: “Government will work with partners, including the publishing
industry, to achieve free access to publicly-funded research as soon as possible
and will set an example itself.”</DIV>
<DIV>Para 6.9: “The Research Councils expect the researchers they fund to
deposit published articles or conference proceedings in an open access
repository at or around the time of publication. But this practice is unevenly
enforced. Therefore, as an immediate step, we have asked the Research Councils
to ensure the researchers they fund fulfil the current requirements.
Additionally, the Research Councils have now agreed to invest £2 million in the
development, by 2013, of a UK ‘Gateway to Research’. In the first instance this
will allow ready access to Research Council funded research information and
related data but it will be designed so that it can also include research funded
by others in due course.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For those of us who witnessed the negative reaction of the previous UK
Government to the 2004 Parliamentary Enquiry, these words are wonderful to read,
and a tribute to the work carried out since 2004 to bring home to Government the
potential benefits of OA to research and education communities and to the
taxpayer. The concern about the funding of OA publication charges remains, but
UK authors and research institutions now have full Government support for making
the results of publicly-funded research available in repositories.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Fred Friend</DIV>
<DIV>Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>
<p></p>
-- <br />
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google<br />
Groups "SPARC OA Forum" group.<br />
To post to this group, send email to sparc-oaforum@arl.org<br />
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to<br />
sparc-oaforum+unsubscribe@arl.org<br />
For more options, visit this group at<br />
<a href="http://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum">http://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum</a><br />