Open Access – a funder’s perspective

Robert Terry

Senior Policy Adviser

The Wellcome Trust

Supports more than 5,000 researchersat 400 locations in 42 different countries

Funding major initiatives in public engagement with science and SciArt projects

The UK’s leading supporter of researchinto the History of Medicine

Planned expenditure in 2002/03 of c £500 million

One of the world’s largest medical research charities

Human genome project

Funded by the Wellcome Trust

Journals with> 30 papers1995 - 1999*

Commercial33%

Society43%

University Press24%

Elsevier 10%Portland Press 5%CUP 5%Blackwell 4% OUP 4% Nature 3%

Total Trust papers n=16,646 in 1292 journals*Source: ROD

Where do Trust-funded researchers publish?

SQW Economic analysis of scientific research publishing

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/scipubreport

The economic cycle of scientific publishing

Free

Publishers

LibrariesResearchers

Shareholders & Societies

Public funders & HEFCE

£ Profit

Free

£

£ £

Alternative model - open access

The copyright holder(s) must grant to the public a free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy, distribute and make derivative works, in any medium for any purpose.

A digital copy must be deposited in an open public archival repository (for example US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central).

Funder initiatives Leadership - demonstrate engagement with issues, join

with other research funders, raise awareness in research community, fund research

Fund - cost of publication (marginal to research costs) Copyright - encourage (and eventually enforce) author

retention (involve publishers and IPR lawyers) Repository – eprint, open access (post journal review) Digitization project – 12+ journals £1.25 m PubMed

Central Evaluation - recognise intrinsic value of content of paper

rather than title of journal

The future

More of the same? - unlikely

Increased use of repositories - likely

More support from funders? - very likely

e.g.Howard Hughes, Max Planck, CNRS,

WHO.....NIH(?)

Tipping point?

UK Parliament S&T Committee Inquiry