Conclusions and recommendations
1. It
is clear to us that, in the Government Response, DTI has sought
to neutralise some of views put forward by the Joint Information
Systems Committee and other organisations and departments. This
will prevent the Government from making any significant progress
on this issue. (Paragraph 7)
2. rather than engaging
in the complex issues posed by the Committee's Report, the Government
has clearly decided against the author-pays model ahead of the
further investigation that it was urged to pursue. This approach
prejudges the issue. (Paragraph 8)
3. Following completion
of the European Commission study into the market for scientific
publications, to which the OFT response refers, we request that
the Director General of Fair Trading agrees to write again to
the Committee setting out the actions he proposes to take on the
basis of the Commission's findings and the concerns expressed
in our Report. (Paragraph 10)
4. We are disappointed
that the Government has missed the opportunity to take more decisive
action in response to our Report. We recommend that the Government
reconsider its position on this important issue in the light of
the other responses to our Report published here; the forthcoming
RCUK policy on the publication of, and access to, research outputs;
and in view of the support for the Committee's stance from the
Wellcome Trust, an important research funder. In this context,
we do not believe that Government should continue to refuse to
provide the modest funds necessary to make institutional repositories
workable, and to allow the experimentation necessary to properly
test the feasibility of the author-pays publishing model.
(Paragraph 12)
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