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 broadlyand 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 knowand you heard evidence from Frederick Friend
on this issueto 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,
requiringnot 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 immenseI mean,
as a person who uses thisand 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 communitywhich is actually
all that really matters at the end of the daywill 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 accessagain, 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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