BioMed Central Blog

Open access vital for safeguarding UK scholarly research

A new commissioned report has recommended that academic policymakers promote the adoption of gold-route open access publishing to help increase access to scholarly journals.

Commissioned by Research Information Network (RIN), Research Libraries UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Publishing Research Consortium and the Joint Information Systems Committee, the report ‘Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications’ is the result of a wide-ranging consultation on the future of the scholarly publishing landscape with UK-based stakeholders including research funders, librarians and publishers.

The report, part of RIN's Transitions in Scholarly Communication portfolio, examines five different routes for achieving greater access to research articles, and scrutinizes the relative costs and benefits of each method. Its authors conclude that "gold open access" (i.e. open access journals such as those published by BioMed Central) offers the most attractive model for policymakers to pursue in order to increase access to research articles. Better sustainability, greater transparency of costs, and increased cost-effectiveness are all highlighted as key advantages of the open access publishing model for communicating the results of research in the UK.

RIN go on to suggest that the report shoul provide a basis for future discussion of the long-term goal of ensuring the widest possible dissemination of scholarly material and note that they hope that the recommendations provide a catalyst for the development of new approaches during the next five years.

Posted by Tara Cronin at 13:11    Comments (0)