[LIS-Forum] Free access to British scientific research within two years

[G Mahesh]

Free access to British scientific research within two years

>From The Guardian, UK, Sunday 15 July 2012

The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded
scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by
2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the
invention of the internet.

Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the
British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and
individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world.

In an interview with the Guardian before Monday's announcement David
Willetts, the universities and science minister, said he expected a full
transformation to the open approach over the next two years.

The move reflects a groundswell of support for "open access" publishing
among academics who have long protested that journal publishers make large
profits by locking research behind online paywalls. "If the taxpayer has
paid for this research to happen, that work shouldn't be put behind a
paywall before a British citizen can read it," Willetts said.

"This will take time to build up, but within a couple of years we should
see this fully feeding through."

He said he thought there would be "massive" economic benefits to making
research open to everyone.

Though many academics will welcome the announcement, some scientists
contacted by the Guardian were dismayed that the cost of the transition,
which could reach £50m a year, must be covered by the existing science
budget and that no new money would be found to fund the process. That
could lead to less research and fewer valuable papers being published.

British universities now pay around £200m a year in subscription fees to
journal publishers, but under the new scheme, authors will pay "article
processing charges" (APCs) to have their papers peer reviewed, edited and
made freely available online. The typical APC is around £2,000 per
article.

Tensions between academics and the larger publishing companies have risen
steeply in recent months as researchers have baulked at journal
subscription charges their libraries were asked to pay.

More than 12,000 academics have boycotted the Dutch publisher Elsevier, in
part of a broader campaign against the industry that has been called the
"academic spring"........

Read complete article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research?newsfeed=true


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