Open Access to Research in the
United Kingdom
Organic.Edunet Conference, Budapest
Jackie Wickham
Open Access Adviser
Centre for Research Communications
University of Nottingham
Presentation Outline
What is open access?
UK landscape
Attitudes to OA in the UK
Role of the Repositories Support Project
What is Open Access
“Open Access (OA) means that scholarly literature
is made freely available on the internet, so that it
can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed,
printed, searched, text mined, or used for any
other lawful purpose, without financial, legal or
technical barriers, subject to proper attribution of
authorship.”
Research Information Network, June 2010
Routes to OA - Gold
Image by Warren Pilkington, zawtowers, Flickr
Routes to OA - Green
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Image by Rojabro, Flickr
Why it’s important
Access in the developing world
Increased readership and citation
http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla75/101kousha-en.pdf
Quicker dissemination
Secure storage
Better discoverability (indexed by Google)
Encourages collaboration
Permission to archive
Summary: 62% of publishers listed in RoMEO formally
allow some form of self-archiving.
Repositories in the UK
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OA and agriculture research
16 universities and research centres in UK
All but one provide some form of OA
• Institutional repository
• Subject repository e.g. OpenFields, Organic Eprints
• Web pages
Caveat –in repositories some items are
metadata only.
Mandates
Research Councils UK supports principle of OA
(but does not mandate)
BBSRC requires research to be deposited at
the “earliest available opportunity”.
UK PubMed Central – practically all public
funded biomedical and health research has to
be OA within 6 months of publication.
18 HE institutions have a mandate in the UK
(Source ROARMAP 5/08/10)
Researchers attitudes
“If your employer or research funder REQUIRED you to deposit
copies of your articles in an open archive, what would be your
reaction? (Response from agriculture authors)
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
I would comply willingly
I would comply reluctantly
I would not comply
Swan, A and Brown, S. (2005) Open Access self-archiving: An author study (Key Perspectives Limited, Cornwall,
UK), http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/1/jisc2.pdf
Researchers attitudes
“Open access and open source – like students of other
ages, Generation Y researchers express a desire for an allembracing, seamless accessible research information
network in which restrictions to access do not restrain
them. However, the annual report demonstrates that most
Generation Y students do not have a clear understanding
of what open access means and this negatively impacts
their use of open access resources, so this is an area to be
followed up in the next year.”
Researchers of tomorrow – Annual Report 2009/2010,
June 2010 (JISC/British Library 3 year study)
Economic case for Open Access
Savings for HE – £115 million per year
Increased returns on investment in R & D up to
£170 million
Impact agenda
Houghton et al (2009) Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: exploring the costs and benefits
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf
Swan, A. (2010) Modelling scholarly communication options: Costs and benefits for universities http://ierepository.jisc.ac.uk/442/2/Modelling_scholarly_communication_report_final1.pdf
Repositories Support Project Objectives
more repositories in higher education
institutions in England, Wales and Northern
Ireland
more content in existing repositories
more types of content in existing repositories
closer integration of repositories into
institutional information systems
promotion of best practice and standards
investigation of the new role of institutions in
research output curation and access
What we do – information and
communication
Website
Blog
Briefing papers
What we do – training, conferences
What we do
O! She doth teach the torches to
burn bright
UKCoRR
UK Council of Research Repositories - www.ukcorr.org
A group for repository managers by repository managers
An independent professional body to allow repository
managers to share experiences and discuss issues of
common concern
To give repository managers a group voice in national
discussions and policy development independent of
projects or temporary initiatives
To grow together as a community and learn from each
other’s experiences
Mailing list.
215 members (August 2010)
Links
Centre for Research Communications
http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk
Repositories Support Project www.rsp.ac.uk
RoMEO www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
JULIET www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/
OpenDoar www.opendoar.org
JISC www.jisc.ac.uk
UKCoRR www.ukcorr.org
Jackie Wickham
Jacqueline.wickham@nottingham.ac.uk
+44(0)115 8466389