Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings

“ Over the past two decades, all intermediaries—publishers, aggregators, abstract and indexing services, libraries and so on—have had continually to re-assess and redefine their roles, in a world where authors can in principle communicate direct with their readers: for they can readily broadcast information direct via a blog or a website. Readers no longer have to visit a library to find material relevant to their work; for they can discover and gain access to relevant material whenever and wherever they have access to the internet. ”

“ The ways in which journals fulfil their core functions have been transformed over the past twenty years, as a result of changing technologies, but also the combined efforts of publishers, editors, and researchers themselves. So have the behaviours and attitudes of researchers both as producers and consumers of the information that journals contain. The UK has been in the lead in both developments. It is a global centre for the publishing of research; publishers based in the UK are responsible for over five thousand journal titles, and a fifth of the articles published globally each year. ”

“ At a fundamental level, societies will have to consider how best to fund their scholarly and other activities, and the extent to which it is prudent to rely on the surpluses generated by publishing. It would be wrong to over-protect societies and their publications, or to favour them over other publishers. But funders and policy makers should be aware of the risk that any policies that may undermine the viability of subscription-based journals may also endanger the core activities of key learned societies, and the support they provide to the UK research community and its work. ”

“ Communicating research results through journals has proved remarkably effective in enabling researchers to build on the work of others, to scrutinise and refine the results, to contribute additional ideas and observations, and to formulate new questions and theories. As the Royal Society notes in its report on Science as an Open Enterprise, [1] ‘openness is intrinsic to the progress of science’. Journals play a vital role in facilitating that progress, as key channels of communication which also help to build up the ‘invisible colleges’ of researchers working in fields of common interest. ”

“ Barriers to access—particularly when the research is publicly-funded—are increasingly unacceptable in an online world: for such barriers restrict the innovation, growth and other benefits which can flow from research.
The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable. Effective publication and dissemination is essential to realising that principle, especially for communicating to non-specialists. ”

“ Research does not operate like a production line where resources are put in at one end, and results leading to innovative products and services come out at the other end. Rather, it functions as an eco-system with complex and intricate interdependencies. Nevertheless, it is entirely appropriate that there should be repeated efforts to improve the connectivity between the research base in universities on the one hand, and the innovation system on the other; and improving access to published research findings is one way of facilitating such efforts. ”

“ Of course, much of the expenditure on R&D is devoted to the development of products, processes or services, relatively little of which results in the kinds of research findings and outputs that are reported in books and journals. Governments tend to be the major funders of the basic and applied research that results in such findings; and they have increased—or at least sought to protect—their budgets for investment in research because they see such investment as an essential underpinning for a successful modern economy and society. ”

“ UK researchers are world-leading in the quality as well as the quantity of the work they produce. Their standing is underpinned by systems to ensure that they have effective and high-quality channels through which they can publish and disseminate their findings, and that they perform to the best standards by subjecting their published findings to rigorous peer review. Neither the quality and standing of the UK research community nor the underpinning of high-quality publishing channels must be put at risk. ”

“ Researchers and journal publishers were quick to embrace the digital and online revolutions. But there is a widespread perception, in the UK and across the world, that the full benefits of advances in technologies and services in the online environment have yet to be realised.
Most researchers in the higher education (HE) and related sectors and in large research-intensive companies have access to a larger number of journals than ever before, at any time of day, and wherever they can connect to the internet. ”

“ Cost is a fundamental constraint on the sector’s ability to access research, but the multi-disciplinary interests of organisations in the sector also present a barrier, since it can be hard to decide which journals are the most relevant. Overall, limited access to research literature means that organisations can find it difficult to keep up to date, and that may affect the quality of the services they offer. Such difficulties may be exacerbated in some organisations by lack of expertise in assessing and interpreting the latest research findings. ”

“ The key points here are that there are different routes to open access, and that it is not just a matter of removing payment barriers, but of rights of use and reuse. Progress has not been as rapid as many had hoped, but it is clear that we are already moving towards a regime in which more content is made accessible free at the point of use to more people, in the UK and across the world. ”

“ Third, periods of transition almost invariably bring with them additional costs. It is unlikely that significant increases in access—in the amount of quality-assured content that is available free at the point of use, and in the numbers of people and organisations to whom it is available—can over the next few years be achieved cost-free. During the transition, it is essential to sustain the key and valuable features of the research communications system; and the key players in that system require revenues to support their core activities. But the costs must be sustainable for funders too. ”

“ Nowadays, however, non-specialists face two key problems. First, the huge growth in the volume of research and of journals means that—without effective guidance on the behaviours and norms that underlie the research communications process—it is difficult for non-specialists to navigate their way around the research literature, or to identify authoritative material that is relevant to their needs. There is thus a need for high-quality guidance for non-specialists on the nature, scope and norms used by researchers in publishing their results. ”

“ Very few public libraries provide access to journals, and then only to a very small number—such as Nature or the British Medical Journal—in printed form. For most members of the public, the only way in which they can gain access to journals is through the walk-in service provided by some university libraries. ”

“ But researchers are now more likely to navigate to the content they want through use of a gateway service or search engine rather than by browsing through the tables of contents of individual journals. [23] And they expect that when they discover material that looks relevant to their work, they will be able to access the full text immediately without charge: one of the key frustrations they express is when that expectation is thwarted. A growing minority, as we have seen, also want to use a variety of tools to organise and manipulate the content they find. ”

“ Access on its own does not necessarily make for effective communication. Most journal articles, conference presentations and monographs are written in specialist language that even researchers in related disciplines may find difficult to understand or interpret. Researchers in all disciplines, like other professionals, depend on specialist language to communicate their findings precisely and accurately. But some researchers themselves have complained of articles so poorly-written that it is impossible to replicate the work, or in the worst cases fully to understand what is being reported. ”

“ These are the motivations behind the growth of the world-wide open access movement. For it is clear that many benefits could result if we were to move world-wide to an open access regime, complete with peer review and with effective search, navigation and other value-added services currently provided by publishers, libraries and others. Moves towards open access have achieved a momentum that we believe will continue. ”

“ For all these reasons, individual universities will examine closely the financial implications for them of moves to increase access, and in particular at how they can avoid increases in costs. They will look at the likely transitional as well as continuing costs of measures to ensure that the university’s research is accessible across the world, and that more of the world’s research is accessible across the university. ”

“ In the humanities, where much research is undertaken without specific project funding, open access publishing has hardly taken off at all; and it is patchy in the social sciences, for similar reasons. ”

“ Indeed, we believe meeting the costs of transition is essential in order to manage in an ordered way the move from a research communications system which is becoming increasingly unsustainable as a result of the economic, technological and social changes we have highlighted. While any estimates of the benefits that will accrue to the UK economy and society are similarly subject to much uncertainty, it is clear that the benefits will be real and substantial. ”

“ Universities will need to consider carefully, and to consult with their staff about, the policies and procedures surrounding publication funds. For researchers will be nervous about the implications of giving university and departmental managers a greater say in where and how researchers publish their work: the differences in cost of publishing in one journal rather than another will for the first time (outside those domains where page charges are a common feature of publishing) become a significant issue in decision-making. ”

“ Most universities in the UK now have an institutional repository, though there are considerable differences in size and scope of holdings, and levels of usage. The policies of neither research funders nor universities themselves have yet had a major effect in ensuring that researchers make their publications accessible in institutional repositories as a matter of routine: levels of deposit as yet remain low, and for journal articles in particular, most of the records in institutional repositories tend to consist of metadata rather than full text. ”

“ Improving the flows of the information and knowledge that researchers produce will promote
enhanced transparency, openness and accountability, and public engagement with research; closer linkages between research and innovation, with benefits for public policy and services, and for economic growth; improved efficiency in the research process itself, through increases in the amount of information that is readily accessible, reductions in the time spent in finding it, and greater use of the latest tools and services to organise, manipulate and analyse it ”

“ For other companies—particularly the large and diverse SME part of the sector—levels of access are much more varied and problematic. One of the key issues is lack of awareness and understanding of the research literature; and of course for many SMEs, articles in journals will relatively seldom be of direct relevance to their work. They tend to rely instead on professional and trade publications, which may themselves on occasion report on the latest findings circulating in the research community. ”

“ Governments across the world therefore see the vitality of the research base as fundamental to the health of a modern society and economy. Generating social and economic benefits through investments in research are thus key considerations in the development of public policy. ”

“ Subscriptions for licences for journals are the only route through which users can get access free at the point of use to the articles they publish that are not accessible either through a repository or through an open access or hybrid journal. ”

“ The digital revolution has also brought the need for new services in areas such as digital preservation: the role of research libraries in ensuring the long-term preservation of print does not readily transfer to digital content, and while services such as Portico and the edepot at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Netherlands have made considerable progress, we are still some way from a position where there are robust arrangements in place for the long term preservation of digital copies of all issues of all journal titles so that they remain accessible for future generations. ”

“ The development of effective channels of communication between researchers across the globe has been a critical factor underpinning the growth in our understanding of the world over the past 350 years. Since the establishment of the first scientific journals in 1665, the communication of theoretical and empirical findings through such journals and other publications has been at the heart of the scientific and broader research enterprise. ”

“ In order to meet this criterion, arrangements must be in place to enable publishers (whether they are in the commercial or the not-for-profit sector) to meet the legitimate costs of peer review, production, and marketing, as well as high standards of presentation, discoverability and navigation, together with the kinds of linking and enrichment of texts (‘semantic publishing’) that researchers and other readers increasingly expect. Publishers also need to generate surpluses for investment in innovation and new services ”