Regional Challenges in Achieving Open Access and Proposed Recommendations

Working Together to Promote Open Access Policy Alignment in Europe

Meeting on Provisions in Licensing Incorporating new developments in daily licensing practice: Setting conditions for open access, patron driven access, and data & text mining

Following the workshop on new developments in daily licensing practice in November 2011, we brought together fourteen representatives from national consortia (from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the UK) and publishers (Elsevier, SAGE and Springer) met in Copenhagen on 9 March 2012 to discuss provisions in licences to accommodate new developments. The one day workshop aimed to: present background and ideas regarding the provisions KE Licensing Expert Group developed; introduce and explain the provisions the invited publishers currently use;ascertain agreement on the wording for long term preservation, continuous access and course packs; give insight and more clarity about the use of open access provisions in licences; discuss a roadmap for inclusion of the provisions in the publishers’ licences; result in report to disseminate the outcome of the meeting. Participants of the workshop were: United Kingdom: Lorraine Estelle (Jisc Collections) Denmark: Lotte Eivor Jørgensen (DEFF), Lone Madsen (Southern University of Denmark), Anne Sandfær (DEFF/Knowledge Exchange) Germany: Hildegard Schaeffler (Bavarian State Library), Markus Brammer (TIB) The Netherlands: Wilma Mossink (SURF), Nol Verhagen (University of Amsterdam), Marc Dupuis (SURF/Knowledge Exchange) Publishers: Alicia Wise (Elsevier), Yvonne Campfens (Springer), Bettina Goerner (Springer), Leo Walford (Sage) Knowledge Exchange: Keith Russell The main outcome of the workshop was that it would be valuable to have a standard set of clauses which could used in negotiations, this would make concluding licences a lot easier and more efficient. The comments on the model provisions the Licensing Expert group had drafted will be taken into account and the provisions will be reformulated. Data and text mining is a new development and demand for access to allow for this is growing. It would be easier if there was a simpler way to access materials so they could be more easily mined. However there are still outstanding questions on how authors of articles that have been mined can be properly attributed.

Sustainability of Open Access Services - Phases 1 & 2

Although some services that support Open Access have developed a sustainable business model, many started as projects and continue to run on recurrent project funding or goodwill. If these are critical components of the evolving scholarly communication system the foundation of Open Access is vulnerable. Knowledge Exchange has commissioned this study as part of a larger programme of work to look at the issue of sustaining key services into the long term. This report focuses on phases one and two of the programme. Phase one was a scoping exercise, carried out mainly through a literature review and an extensive stakeholder interview exercise, to describe the services that are currently available or would be valuable in the future. It also investigated what roles stakeholders could play in this future scenario. Phase two was a stakeholder consultation and engagement exercise. The aim was to engage stakeholders with the work programme so that they could contribute their views, get involved with the work and have a voice in the thinking about future scenarios. The key services are presented for three future scenarios: ‘Gold’ Open Access, fully ‘Green’ Open Access and Green’ Open Access supplementing subscription access as ‘Gold’ OA grows. Three strategic areas are identified as having particular potential for future work. These are embedding business development expertise into service development; consideration of how to move money around the system to enable Open Access to be achieved optimally; and governance and coordination of the infrastructural foundation of Open Access. The report concludes with seven recommendations, both high-level and practical, for further work around these strategic areas.

IPR POLICY AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE REPORT FOR SCIENTIFIC POLICY MAKERS

The report provides recommendations to policy makers in science and scholarly research regarding IPR policy to increase the impact of research and make the outcomes more available. The report argues that the impact of publicly-funded research outputs can be increased through a fairer balance between private and public interest in copyright legislation. This will allow for wider access to and easier re-use of published research reports. The common practice of authors being required to assign all rights to a publisher restricts the impact of research outputs and should be replaced by wider use of a non-exclusive licence. Full access and re-use rights to research data should be encouraged through use of a research-friendly licence.