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Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340 - 359)

WEDNESDAY 5 MAY 2004

PROFESSOR SIR KEITH O'NIONS, MR RAMA THIRUNAMACHANDRAN AND PROFESSOR JOHN WOOD

  Q340  Kate Hoey: Could you speak in pounds not dollars.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I am terribly sorry. I will try to do the mental conversion. We are talking somewhere between £300 and £3,000 for publishing an individual article is the estimate for open access. Now I am aware that the Royal Society made a statement to you which said that, if the 300 research fellows that it funds published all of their material in open access, and indeed if the cost of that open access publishing on the author was towards the sort of middle to upper end of that bracket, they would require an extra £2 million per year to support that publication, so this is part of that debate. If you then take that through the whole academic enterprise in the UK you do get fairly large numbers

  Q341  Dr Iddon: How do we make industry pay its full whack?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: At the moment industry, you could argue, pays a significant whack in the present system. It is getting some things for free through open access, which is relatively small. It is paying a significant amount of money to not-for-profit organisations in buying their journals, which is supporting the scientific enterprise and the commercial publishers.

  Q342  Paul Farrelly: Do you agree there is an inherent problem, a free-rider problem, that may damage academia and the whole of the publishing market, were the Government wanting to push one particular model that was not tested in the market place?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Personally I do. I think I was reflecting where discussions have got to, not only in DTI but more broadly—and my colleagues here will make their point. There is a danger of pushing open access too hard and loading the dice in favour of open access, because I do not personally think the business model has been researched enough to justify that, and that is why I use this rather loose language "facilitate". I believe the community will find its way with open access. It has to be confident in the peer-review system, confident that if it publishes there it is going to have its impact on the broader community that it is looking for, and I think this will develop in a sort of market way. I feel we have a responsibility to make that type of publishing available but not to load the dice so heavily in favour of it at a time when I do not think we fully understand that model or its impact or indeed the uptake is going to be pretty variable between the different sorts of sciences. So I am agreeing with you.

  Q343  Chairman: Let's get a bit more specific then: Are you talking to the DfES or the DCMS in this strategic look at the whole situation?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: Could I respond to that? It is fair to say that at HEFCE we have, through the Joint Information Systems Committee, provided some funding, as you know—and you heard evidence from Frederick Friend on this issue—to support exploratory work on open access, and I think I agree with Sir Keith when he says that we need to explore further in order to use innovative means by which we can transmit knowledge and information further. I think we do need a strategic approach nationally to harness all our research information resources to best use. And, as you also probably know, HEFCE, together with the other UK funding bodies and the British Library and the other national libraries, the Scottish and Welsh libraries, did ask Sir Brian Follett to do a review of his.

  Q344  Chairman: When is this all going to come to fruition, then?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: Sir Brian published a report.

  Q345  Chairman: When is this strategy going to come to fruition?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: Which we are actually working on now and the OST, DTI, DfES, the other funding bodies and the libraries have had discussions and we hope very soon, in the next eight weeks, we will actually be in a position where we have a systematic, strategic look at this issue. Sir Brian Follet recommended that the funding bodies, together with the libraries, should set up a research libraries' network, which was a small body which took a strategic perspective on research information and resources, and that is what we are endeavouring to implement.

  Q346  Chairman: In eight weeks time will there be a document, a statement? Where will it be made?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: There will be a statement made, I hope very soon, a joint statement which sets out the way forward in terms of a strategic framework, and then a lot more work could be done. The work we have funded through JISC is only a start and only a part of it.

  Q347  Chairman: Is VAT on digital publications part of that debate as well? That has caused quite a bit of agitation amongst a lot of people. Are you going to do something about VAT?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: It is certainly an issue which has been brought to our attention, yes.

  Q348  Chairman: Are you going to do anything about it?

  Mr Thirunamachandran: It is not something which HEFCE has, in a sense, a particular role in or could do anything about, other than—

  Q349  Chairman: Keith O'Nions, are you going to do something about it? Are you going to talk to the Treasury about it?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: OST has not. I do not know, frankly, whether other parts of the DTI have. I will certainly let you know if that is the case. My sense is that what could usefully come out of this pretty vigorous discussion and debate is that there ought to be a policy put together jointly between DfES, OST/DTI and DCMS.

  Q350  Chairman: What would facilitate that? Why has it not been happening? This has been going on for 10/15 years in my life.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I remember it going back 10 or 15 years and I still have not published in an open-access journal. It has been going on a long time. The profile of it is, I think, probably somewhat higher in the United States than here. There are high profile articles being published quite frequently in the journals Science and Nature. I do not think the debate has been as vigorous in the UK and I do not think the overall strength of opinion is as great.

  Q351  Chairman: Do you think it is vigorous enough just now?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Let me be quite frank; I think the interest that your Committee has taken in this subject has given some stimulus and momentum to broader debates in government, which I think is a healthy situation.

  Q352  Kate Hoey: Are you saying that in neither of your capacities have you put anything into the Treasury asking a question about VAT? The OST have not made any representations to the Treasury.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I have received a note. It is always good to get facts from those sitting behind! "DTI have raised with Customs & Excise changes on VAT. Needs agreement on EU and a schedule . . ." I think we can probably give you a more formal answer. So there have been discussions with Customs & Excise. I was speaking on my behalf: I have had no discussions with the Treasury. Perhaps we will send you a note formally what has happened.

  Q353  Dr Harris: If we could talk about open access a bit deeper. You have talked about, in your view, not loading the dice, but we have had a huge amount of evidence suggesting that open access is only ever going to happen, given the huge influence of the existing, thriving, successful publishing industry, if government takes a role specifically, by mandate, requiring—not just saying, "Well, if you want to, do it"—that any publicly funded research is fully publicly available and that resources will be made available to require that to be published in an open access form. Clearly there are issues about where the funding comes from, and I will explore that in a moment. If you carry on your "We are going to take a middle way, we are not going to load the dice, we are going to have strategic discussions," we are going to be here in ten years time with very little progress. You have the power, given the huge amount of influence, prestige and money behind publicly funded research in this country, to make a difference. Do you think it is possible you will ever decide, you and your colleagues, to make that difference, to take the plunge?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I do not want to be evasive but—

  Q354  Dr Harris: But?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions:—the changes that have taken place over the last decade in publishing and access to electronic data are simply immense—I mean, as a person who uses this—and we could not have predicted the rate of change that has taken place. I think it would be a pretty brave decision of a government at the present time to say that it has sufficient confidence in the open-access business model and confidence that the community—which is actually all that really matters at the end of the day—will itself have confidence in the peer review quality and the impact of it to shift rapidly from something that it knows and trusts to an open-access model. So, making that decision, I think, would be very bold with the information that we have and would be a little more ideologically driven than pragmatically driven.

  Q355  Dr Harris: I would like to come back to that in a moment, but, Professor Wood, do you have anything more to add or anything on open access that has gone before, because you have not had a chance to say anything yet?

  Professor Wood: Thank you very much. I was hoping not to!

  Q356  Chairman: You were quite good last time.

  Professor Wood: Thank you. I here represent RCUK, not just my own research councils, and across the research councils I would say there is still some degree of uncertainty about how they see the future. At one extreme, in the particle physics community, it has been open access for at least ten years now, on the worldwide web; right through to the humanities side, where perhaps a composer may feel less confident in sharing their work or whatever in that respect. So I think there is a maturing of views. If I may speak on my own council's behalf, we do have a policy of open access and of having an institutional archive: all staff have to put their papers into that archive. There is a spectrum of views here and I think that represents what Keith was saying really, in that in certain areas there needs to become a confidence which is going to take some time to develop.

  Q357  Dr Harris: Let's explore what Sir Keith just said. We have a government that says we are best when we are bold, but you are saying that the policy in your department is not to be bold on this issue because there is still work to be done to ensure that the business model is robust. At least could you say you are actively researching how the sky is going to fall in if there is a requirement that publicly funded research is funded through an open-access model, because many people argue that that would give it the boost it needs and then it will take over. Certainly the public have said they will adjust to such a model. They are not saying, "Keep it away from us, it is a disaster," they will fix their price and go with it. Is it not just the innate conservatism of the publishing and scientific community and policy?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: No, I do not think so. I told you that officials are discussing these matters actively in OST. Ministers have not made any policy change. I think one must be clear what ministers think and what officials are talking about. I would go back to what I said: my own view is that it would be unwise to go at more than an organic rate in this, and the uptake of open access—again, I will use the word "facilitate"—we should make it possible for people to do that, and for people in institutions that are not cash-rich we should make sure the money is available to do this if they wish. But I think people have to develop the confidence in that. For example, the most prestigious thing for most scientists to do is to publish in Nature and commercial journals of that type. I think it will be a very long time before a journal like Nature looses its immense prestige as a place to publish anywhere, for anybody in the world, even though it is a profit-making organisation.

  Q358  Dr Harris: I understand that point, but is it not an all or nothing? Because you are never going to get a big shift to author pays, unless you get a shift in funding from libraries paying, to research grants having whatever the amount of money it is reckoned to be. Saying we are going to facilitate it, not load the dice, play a middle game, really means gradual progress when that is going to take years and years and years. Do you at least accept that is the game we are in, even if you do not think the decision has been made?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I do, indeed. One is also aware that there are quite different political views on whether commercial publishing and making a profit is a worthy and justifiable thing or it is not. That is the world we are in. But, in terms of the personal view I am expressing to you, I think this thing should go at an organic rate commensurate with the way in which the community wishes to change. Probably what will happen is it will change a great deal faster than you or I expect, as it has changed in the last 10 years at a rate that we could not have anticipated as the worldwide web and the internet have matured.

  Q359  Paul Farrelly: I wanted to take the opposite tack from Evan, because of the frustration borne out of state funding research, surrounding copyright and people having to pay for access to their own research in the way the industry is now set up, there is an element of having your cake and eating it about this debate about open access. In a sense that it is a false discussion, because it would be wonderful to have all that access to your own research for free plus access to all the other research that is published in journals to have the best of both worlds. The people proposing open access have not really considered the serious potential effects, which are unpredictable, on the structure of the market now, and because of potential free-rider problems, as to whether the amount of research published might actually shrink.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: All I can say is I agree with you. I do not think we have sufficient analysis and understanding of it in a sector that is still significantly less than 5% and is being subsidised. I think it is playing an important role, but I do not think we have enough research to give us the confidence for me to demur from the point you make.


 
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