Worldwide open access: UK leadership?

The web is destined to become humankind's cognitive commons, where digital knowledge is jointly created and freely shared. The UK has been a leader in the global movement toward open access (OA) to research but recently its leadership has been derailed by the joint influence of the publishing i...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Stevan Harnad
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Ubiquity Press 2013-03-01
Series:Insights: The UKSG Journal
Online Access:http://insights.uksg.org/articles/53
_version_ 1818486983053279232
author Stevan Harnad
author_facet Stevan Harnad
author_sort Stevan Harnad
collection DOAJ
description The web is destined to become humankind's cognitive commons, where digital knowledge is jointly created and freely shared. The UK has been a leader in the global movement toward open access (OA) to research but recently its leadership has been derailed by the joint influence of the publishing industry lobby from without and well-intentioned but premature and unhelpful over-reaching from within the OA movement itself. The result has been the extremely counterproductive ‘Finch Report’ followed by a new draft of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) OA mandate, downgrading the role of cost-free OA self-archiving of research publications (‘green OA’) in favor of paying subscription publishers over and above subscriptions, out of scarce research funds, in exchange for making single articles OA (‘hybrid gold OA’). The motivation of the new policy is to reform publication and to gain certain re-use rights (CC-BY), but the likely effect would be researcher resistance, very little OA and a waste of research funds. There is still time to fix the RCUK mandate and restore the UK's leadership by taking a few very specific steps to clarify and strengthen the green component by adding a mechanism for monitoring and verifying compliance, with consequences for non-compliance, along lines also being adopted in the EC and the US.
first_indexed 2024-12-10T16:30:55Z
format Article
id doaj.art-d10155e4aa7748ff899a54d1b506a012
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2048-7754
language English
last_indexed 2024-12-10T16:30:55Z
publishDate 2013-03-01
publisher Ubiquity Press
record_format Article
series Insights: The UKSG Journal
spelling doaj.art-d10155e4aa7748ff899a54d1b506a0122022-12-22T01:41:33ZengUbiquity PressInsights: The UKSG Journal2048-77542013-03-01261142110.1629/2048-7754.26.1.1449Worldwide open access: UK leadership?Stevan HarnadThe web is destined to become humankind's cognitive commons, where digital knowledge is jointly created and freely shared. The UK has been a leader in the global movement toward open access (OA) to research but recently its leadership has been derailed by the joint influence of the publishing industry lobby from without and well-intentioned but premature and unhelpful over-reaching from within the OA movement itself. The result has been the extremely counterproductive ‘Finch Report’ followed by a new draft of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) OA mandate, downgrading the role of cost-free OA self-archiving of research publications (‘green OA’) in favor of paying subscription publishers over and above subscriptions, out of scarce research funds, in exchange for making single articles OA (‘hybrid gold OA’). The motivation of the new policy is to reform publication and to gain certain re-use rights (CC-BY), but the likely effect would be researcher resistance, very little OA and a waste of research funds. There is still time to fix the RCUK mandate and restore the UK's leadership by taking a few very specific steps to clarify and strengthen the green component by adding a mechanism for monitoring and verifying compliance, with consequences for non-compliance, along lines also being adopted in the EC and the US.http://insights.uksg.org/articles/53
spellingShingle Stevan Harnad
Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
Insights: The UKSG Journal
title Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
title_full Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
title_fullStr Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
title_full_unstemmed Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
title_short Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
title_sort worldwide open access uk leadership
url http://insights.uksg.org/articles/53
work_keys_str_mv AT stevanharnad worldwideopenaccessukleadership