The United Kingdom ParliamentThe United Kingdom ParliamentAbout ParliamentMembers and StaffBusinessPublications & Recordsline imagesA-Z IndexGlossaryContact UsHelp
 HansardArchivesResearchHOC PublicationsHOL PublicationsCommittees
Advanced
search
Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240 - 259)

WEDNESDAY, 21 APRIL 2004

MRS LYNNE BRINDLEY, MR PETER FOX, MR FREDERICK J FRIEND AND MS DI MARTIN

  Q240  Dr Turner: You also have this awful acronym, NESLi2. We have been told that this was based on a need to secure profits for the publishers involved. What methods did you use to calculate a fair proportion of margin for the publishers when you designed the scheme?

  Mr Friend: I do not know where that quotation comes from. From JISC's point of view, which manages the NESLI initiative, our motive is to increase access and to get better value for money. We have certainly no wish to increase publishers' profits.

  Q241  Dr Turner: How does the NESLi2 work in practice in terms of administration and value for money? Does it give libraries any worthwhile savings as a result of using this scheme?

  Mr Friend: It does, and it has increased access to a limited extent, but it is quite labour-intensive in terms of negotiation, both national negotiations and at local level as well.

  Q242  Kate Hoey: The one thing that seems to unite yourselves, the publishers and the academics, is the complaint about VAT. You have probably seen the Treasury note that was put round. Would you tell us a little bit about whether you feel the differential is significant, and what you have done to try and make that better, other than getting the Treasury to change their mind—or the European Union?

  Mr Fox: If I can quote a specific example, I have had figures recently from a research university in the north of England, which quoted figures for ScienceDirect in 2003. They paid £450,000 for ScienceDirect for last year, which was based on a mixed print and electronic environment. They want to move to an entirely electronic environment from next year, and the price will go up by £100,000. Much of that is VAT, because you are paying VAT on the full subscription rather than on the top-up, as it were, from the print.

  Ms Martin: I can give you similar figures from the University of Hertfordshire, but an order of magnitude lower. The VAT we paid last year on journal subscriptions—and I am afraid this is across all subject areas—was £100,000. That is 5% of my total information provision budget.

  Mr Friend: The solution we would encourage you to raise with HM Customs & Excise is to allow libraries exemption. They are not necessarily asking for zero rating. Already there is a precedent for medical equipment which universities can identify themselves and then be given exemption from VAT. There is no reason in principle, and it would not contravene European regulations, if that exemption were extended to electronic information.

  Q243  Kate Hoey: Do you accept anything the Treasury says in terms of saying there are quite substantial differences between the print and the digital?

  Mrs Brindley: Clearly there are differences, but those arguments imply that scientific information is, if you like, analogous to a consumer good, whereas arguably it is an intermediary good in support of R&D, and it seems to fly in the face of the advice and the approach that the Treasury is taking to R&D and tax credits and so on. There is a philosophical inconsistency there.

  Q244  Kate Hoey: Given that there is the unity between you all on this issue, have you done anything about lobbying the Treasury?

  Mrs Brindley: As an aside, the British Library's position is somewhat different, although we are clearly very supportive of our higher education colleagues, because we can recoup 85% of that because of our trading position. However, our concern is that it is inhibiting a faster move towards digital publication and indeed underpinning digital science and digital economy, and so there is a real inhibitor there. I would suggest the exemption is a good one to pursue.

  Q245  Kate Hoey: You are saying that if the Government were serious about long-term investment in research, it would do—

  Mrs Brindley: Clearly, the Government is very serious and has been very supportive of world-class science in Britain generally, and it is absolutely essential that that is supported; so this advice would perhaps appear to be superficially inconsistent, but if that route is not one that can be pursued, then the exemption route is a good one.

  Mr Friend: The library organisations and the publisher organisations jointly have talked to Customs & Excise and have done lobbying within the European Parliament about this, but so far we have hit a brick wall.

  Kate Hoey: Perhaps you would like me to bring it up when we have the debate on the constitution!

  Chairman: You know how they will vote.

  Q246  Bob Spink: JISC are promoting open access and you have got the £150,000 seed money. Can you tell us what your objectives are, please?

  Mr Friend: One of JISC's strategic aims is to improve the effectiveness of scholarly communications, and one key factor in doing that is increasing access. We are not talking only about access for the HE community, but JISC also has a responsibility to the FE community. Indeed, there is huge, untapped need for access to journal literature within the post-16 learning community. Open access will release a lot of information to learners of all ages that is at present being restricted by the subscription model.

  Q247  Bob Spink: Do you think that a switch to the author-pays model is the right way forward?

  Mr Friend: We prefer to talk about a publication payment rather than author-pays because we see the way forward as being through funding agencies agreeing, or indeed requiring that the publication payments can be made out of research grants.

  Q248  Bob Spink: How many publishers have taken advantage of the £150,000 seed money so far?

  Mr Friend: We had seven applications in our first round, and we awarded four grants. That was at very short notice, and we are expecting more applications in the second round.

  Q249  Bob Spink: Do you think that £150,000 is enough or are you looking to increase that amount?

  Mr Friend: No, I do not think it is enough. That is all that JISC feels that it can afford in the current situation. One aspect I would urge this Committee to consider is whether the Government could give further support in the transition situation. We are confident that the open access model is viable in the long-term, but we do accept that there is a risk to publishers in the short term, and that is the purpose of this transition funding.

  Q250  Bob Spink: You did a membership deal with BioMed Central. Can you tell us something about that?

  Mr Friend: That is producing very good results in terms of academic involvement in open access, and it is encouraging us to devote more money to this kind of enterprise.

  Q251  Bob Spink: What did it cost you?

  Mr Friend: I would need to confirm that in writing.

  Q252  Bob Spink: Do you think it is sustainable? Is it a good way forward, this type of deal?

  Mr Friend: Yes, I am certain open access is viable in the long term. Whether the particular BioMed Central membership model is the right way forward I am unclear, but JISC is putting money into various ways of achieving open access and it is also putting money into institutional repositories, so we will find out in due course which is going to be the best route in the long term.

  Q253  Bob Spink: Do you happen to know how many institutions have taken advantage of this BioMed deal?

  Mr Friend: I think the submissions have been running at around 37 articles per month, of which around 20 have passed the peer review process.

  Q254  Bob Spink: Do you think that this open access is going to make bundling a non-issue very quickly; or do you think that bundling will remain a major issue for some years to come?

  Mr Friend: I think a lot depends on the reaction of the academic community and the publishers to the experiments we are undertaking, but personally I do believe that is the future.

  Q255  Mr Key: Can I turn to legal deposit and digitalisation issues. In the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, the Secretary of State could make regulations extending the system of legal deposit to non-print material. The Government has told us that DCMS is consulting on setting up an advisory panel, which it hopes to have in place by the end of this year, with work on regulations then beginning, and legal deposit likely to start in 2005. Is that on track, and is it fast enough? What is slipping through your fingers while this is happening?

  Mrs Brindley: It is the case that we anticipate that the regulatory procedures will continue and implementation will start in 2005, but I would like to take us back to the fact that we have had a voluntary deposit arrangement and since that was implemented in 2000 the British Library has received over 90,000 items. That is not to say that that is everything but it is a substantial part, and since the legislation has been passed, we have had more not less interest in voluntary deposit. Each format, though, will have to go to regulation, and the first regulation will be for off-line publications; but we are talking with the publishers through the joint committee, looking at expanding the voluntary scheme to include electronic journals, to try out the practical issues in voluntary mode before we get to regulation. It is quite important in that regulatory process that that is where the debate around access is going to happen. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act does not give specific access conditions or access rights, so that will have to be negotiated as part of that consultation process. Therefore, any support that you can give for reasonable and appropriate access under each of those formats would be most helpful.

  Q256  Mr Key: Ninety thousand sounds a lot, but what do you estimate are the gaps in your digital deposits? Should it have been 180,000 or 100,000? How much are you missing?

  Mrs Brindley: I can certainly provide the Committee with some figures, but, for example, I think there were about 60,000[2] such publications this year. I can send you the details on the different formats.


  Q257  Mr Key: Are publishers playing the game? Are they depositing their material voluntarily at the moment?

  Mrs Brindley: Since the Legal Deposit Libraries Act was passed last year, we have seen an even stronger interest from the publishers. By and large, we are working very co-operatively with publishers. After all, it is in the interests of all publishers, of all libraries, and indeed of science, that there is a long-term arrangement and a long-term sustainable arrangement for preservation of access to research material.

  Q258  Mr Key: Mr Friend, are there any publishers that are better than others, or some that are rather more difficult to deal with in this respect?

  Mr Friend: There are, yes, and I have already given the example of the American Chemical Society.

  Q259  Chairman: Go on, name some more! You will regret it for the rest of your life if you do not!

  Mr Friend: I would not like to give any more specific examples. Part of the problem that we have already highlighted is that we are dealing with different licences for each publisher, and while there are certain things that do appear in common, the long-term access question varies greatly between publishers in terms of their policies.


2   In fact, this figure refers to the UK electronic publishing output for 2002, the base year of the study undertaken by Electronic Publishing Services Ltd for the Joint Committee on Voluntary Deposit. Back


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2004
Prepared 20 July 2004