Open access: A national licence

Having read the report Open Access: a National Report the Answer I can see that there is a major conversation to have on this topics, not only from librarians and publishers but also from the government. The paper reports that the current problem lies mainly within science and research sector, where the majority of research is created- but access is not easily granted. Open access sets to widen the possible readership and reduce the cost of such a provision. Several policies have been produced including the Finch report, in June 2012 and after that RCUK and HEFCE report.

Ideally the UK wants to operate under the idea of the Global Gold Open Access- where publishers are paid by researchers and papers are made available online for free. A national licence would achieve this as well as having economic benefits. Yet the Policy was only published in March 2015 and it has, as intended to create debate and discussion. There are benefits to having such a rich amount of academic content within the public realm, instead of locked behind academic institutions firewalls. Yet this is a cost, and maybe that cost to some would be too high.

At present the UK has an excellent record for producing research papers and should continue to demonstrate global leadership in disseminating research.

Current plans are that by 2020 material of publication level must be available on an open access basis, hence this growing need to some collaboration to take place. Some have suggested that JISC collections would be a good potential board who could oversee such a project. This paper suggests that an national licence provides a framework where publishers agree a contract with a government body that would make specific journals freely available to anyone within the UK.

Negatives
Yet there are some negatives to such a scheme:
The UK would benefit, however no other country is doing such a project, so it will not be reciprocal between other nations. Particularly I am thinking I am thinking of America in this context.

If each institution had to create a digital repository there would need to be a level of expertise in maintaining such a system. Though I am happy as a librarian to add in new skills, this seems like a mammoth job in shove in the information professions.

The cost implications of who would pay for such a scheme.


There is another option- Green Open Access, this is when a manuscript that is not in the fully published form  but it held within a repository after an embargoed period.

As access is currently mainly granted to academic institutions- others miss out, those with bigger budgets can purchase more. Working in a smallish college means I will never have the budget that a multi-million pound university library. Introducing such a policy would help smaller institutions more than large ones.

The general idea does seem to have merit, and there would be a positive impact on the UK in terms of the amount of research that could be generated, as well as people not working in such silos of information and economic benefits. Yet at the moment more needs to be explored in terms of the pricing and cost to publishers, authority over information, ease of dissemination, storage, impact of changing technology and engagement from publishers. As we have already seen Art book publisher as less willing to provide Ebooks. Therefore limiting the impact and making it less of a national project and more of a STEM one.