Tom Roper's Weblog

BMJ and THES on open access

The latest BMJ picks up the Wellcome report on online journals, but also quotes
Sally Morris of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers , who describes it as "nonsense". See: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7448/1094-d
And the THES also runs a page on the issue, with views from Mark Walport of the Wellcome (for open access) and Arie Jongejan of Elsevier (against). Online content is only available to subscribers, but the paper reference is:
Times Higher Education Supplement
May 7 2004 1639: 8
Publishers resist revolution

SCONUL/CURL evidence now online

The CURL / SCONUL joint submission to the HOCSTC inquiry is now available

Observer reports Wellcome: 'Online science journals 30% cheaper'

Today's Observer reports on a new report from the Wellcome, a follow up to last year's Economic analysis of scientific research publishing The Observer | Business | Wellcome: 'Online science journals 30 pc cheaper'
The report can be found here

The accompanying press release says that they want to submit it to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications, though I fear they have missed the bus. Evidence had to be submitted back in February,

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee: next hearing on scientific publications

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has announced its next hearing in the Scientific Publications Inquiry. It's to be on 5th May and witnesses are:

Professor Sir Keith O'Nions, Director General of the Research Councils (on behalf of DTI and OST)

Rama Thirunamachandran, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer, Higher Education Funding Council for England

A representative from Research Councils UK

A representative from Department for Education and Skills

And the evidence from the hearing of 21st April is now online, when Lynne Brindley, Peter Fox, Fred Friend and Di Martin appeared.

Open access and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Enquiry

Peter Suber comments in Open Access News that the BioMedCentral list of online submissions to the Inquiry is the best. I humbly beg to differ.
They miss some that I have and link to an unauthorised version of the CILIP evidence which, CILIP say, should not be up until the committee has reported.
Of course the definitive list will be out when the Committee publishes its report: but exaggerated deference to British constitutional quirks by CILIP, SCONUL, and CURL means that the online view of the discussion at the moment lacks the contribution of some of the key participants

Reports of evidence to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee Inquiry

Two reports have surfaced of the evidence given last week on 21st April by Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, and others, before the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications.
The Scientist reports on evidence from Lynne Brindley, Peter Fox and Fred Friend, and announes a further hearing on 5th May. The Guardian also runs a report, their main theme the VAT issue.

Why is the open accesss debate not conducted openly?

A curious anomaly strikes me as I update the post in this blog that lists submissions to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Journals that are available online. Several organisations have not put their submissions on their web sites, including CILIP , CURL , and SCONUL , although many others have (see elsewhere in this blog. I contacted these three organisations (and JISC as well who are supposed to have made a submission, though it's nowhere to be found on their web site, and they haven't yet replied). They all explained that the Clerk of the Committee forbids the publication of evidence until the Committee has completed its discussions. This seems odd: I can, to an extent, understand the committee's concern about the publication of versions of oral evidence, which could diverge widely. But if an organisation or individual writes evidence for the Committee and chooses to publish that evidence elsewhere, why shouldn't they? Have they signed away their intellectual property rights to their thought by submitting it to others? Submission to a committee, even a committee of the House of Commons, is surely an act of publication, and unless I sign a particularly restrictive contract with a publisher, I do not lose my IP rights when I publish a book or article, indeed I would expect them to be recognised and protected.
Further, while there may be understandable procedural, historical and constitutional reasons why the committee may wish to control the way in which evidence is published, it seems odd to insist on these when the subject of debate is open access to scientific knowledge (and odder still for organisations with some claim to be interested in freedom of information such as CILIP to acquiesce). It seems to me that this attempt at censorship or self-censorship is in any case a dead letter: both my list and BioMedCentral's list a number of submissions, I would guess that between us we have the majority and I haven't heard yet that any of the authors have been conducted to Traitor's Gate by river.

ISI study on impact of open access journals

Thomson ISI have announced a study of the impact of open access journals. It's available online at: http://www,isinet.com/oaj
I haven't read it yet, but the press release summarising it says that they found no discernible difference in citation impact or frequency of citation between conventional and open access journals.

Creative Commons for UK

There's a draft of a UK Creative Commons licence being developed by people at Oxford. See: http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/uk/

Latest on House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into

The next oral evidence session has been announced for 21st April. Those giving evidence are split into librarians and "academics and associated bodies" (a rather clumsy formulation in my view) . In the first group are:
Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library
Peter Fox, University Librarian, Cambridge University Library
Frederick J. Friend, JISC Consultant and Honorary Director Scholarly Communication University College London
Di Martin, Dean of Learning and Information Services, University of Hertfordshire

In the latter:
Jane Carr, Chief Executive, Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society
Professor M. James C. Crabbe, Head, School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading
Professor Nigel J. Hitchin, Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford
Professor D.F. Williams, Professor of Tissue Engineering, University of Liverpool
Professor John C. Fry , Professor of Microbial Ecology, Cardiff University

The new issue of Information Today runs a report from Richard Poynder on the oral evidence sessions.