APPENDIX 137
Supplementary memorandum from the UK Higher
and Further Education Funding Councils' Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC)
1. How much did your deal for membership
of BioMed Central cost?
The cost to JISC was £85,000 in the first
year. The second year's subscription is calculated on the basis
of £280 per paper published, and the quotation to cover all
authors from UK HE institutions for the period 1st September 2004
to 31st August 2005—based upon experience in the first year—is
just over £80,000.
2. Which institutions are taking part in
SHERPA? How were they selected? What provision is being made for
those institutions that are not taking part?
The institutions currently in SHERPA are : Birkbeck
College, University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, University
of Cambridge, University of Durham, University of Edinburgh, University
of Glasgow, Imperial College London, King's College London, University
of Leeds, University of Newcastle, University of Nottingham, University
of Oxford, Royal Holloway College, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of Sheffield, University College London, University
of York, British Library, and the Arts and Humanities Data Service.
The original bid for JISC funding came from only seven institutions
and were those with an existing practical background in repositories
or digital preservation. More institutions were added through
a tendering process, using the original partners' experience to
enable the joining institutions to leap-frog the initial stages
of repository-building. As part of the SHERPA Project Plan, the
experience of all the institutions currently involved is to be
made available to all HE and FE institutions through presentations
and reports and through materials such as copyright advice to
be made available on the project web-site. Several institutions
currently not participating in SHERPA have already approached
the team for advice on matters such as the choice of repository
software.
3. What measures are you taking in collaboration
with libraries to persuade publishers to allow self-archiving?
Regular discussion takes place between JISC
staff, JISC committee members and publishers on copyright issues,
and the copyright position in relation to the deposit of journal
articles in university repositories is frequently part of these
exchanges. The unofficial response from publishers when this topic
is raised is generally to accept that pre-prints or post-prints
will be deposited in repositories, combined with a reluctance
to make formal changes to their copyright policies and advice
that the "de facto" acceptance of self-archiving may
be withdrawn if publishers' income is threatened. In addition
some of the projects in the FAIR Programme have entered in more
detailed discussions with publishers. An example is the collaborative
work between the SHERPA Project and Oxford University Press to
explore ways of archiving OUP content in repositories. Staff managing
repositories have also sought clarification from publishers on
the wording of their copyright agreements in relation to the deposit
of particular items. The ROMEO database is being used to inform
the academic community about the formal position taken by individual
publishers.
4. What steps have you taken to implement
joint procurement procedures with the NHS?
The issues around joint procurement are being
considered by the NHS/HE Forum, a body of HE IT and Library Directors
and their equivalents in the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland. The Forum's Content Group sponsored a report
called "Users First" by an independent consultant and
the Content Group is taking forward the issues identified in this
report. One action line is to map the resources currently purchased
by both HE and the NHS, and one resource common to both communities
has already been identified for joint negotiation with the publisher
concerned using a common licence. Another action line will be
to identify a core list of journals required by NHS and FE staff.
In Scotland HEIs have been able to benefit by getting access at
preferential rates, if they wish, to some of the content of the
NHS e-Library. Such collaboration cuts across the boundaries of
several government ministries and therefore the funding stream
for the investigation and implementation of joint negotiation
and procurement procedures is not clear. There is a willingness
to develop joint services in the interests of education, research
and patient care but the current structures do not make the development
of these services straightforward.
Negotiation difficulties with the American Chemical
Society
In addition to the response to these specific
questions, I welcome the opportunity to clarify my reference in
oral evidence to the problems experienced by JISC in negotiating
with the American Chemical Society.
My view that the American Chemical Society is
a difficult publisher in negotiations for the bundling of electronic
content is based upon the negotiations for UK universities under
the National Electronic Site Licence Initiative, NESLI. These
negotiations were completed in 2002 for access to content from
January 2002 until December 2004. The negotiations—for a
relatively small number of journals—took more than six months,
and only the fact that the journals are very important led us
in the end to agree to licensing terms with which we were not
happy. We could have said "no" but our students and
academic staff needed access to these journals.
Our concerns lay in two areas. Firstly the ACS
policy of asking for a separate subscription for electronic access
to older volumes. The current subscription only gives library
users access to the current volume plus the previous four years,
and if you have subscribed to the journals for many years you
have to subscribe to the "ACS Journal Archives" to continue
access. The ACS policy contrasts unfavourably with the policy
of the American Physical Society on this issue. At the time we
were negotiating the NESLI deal ACS would not even offer access
after cancellation to volumes for which a subscription had been
paid, although under pressure from the library community world-wide
they now offer a PDF or CD-ROM in this situation. Our second concern
was and is that ACS refuse to agree to English law as the governing
law in the licensing contract. This refusal could have two bad
effects for UK libraries, firstly that in the case of a dispute
we would have to contest the case in an American court under US
State contract legislation, and secondly that legally we cannot
take advantage of the provisions in UK copyright legislation for
academic copying. When a UK publisher supplies to a US library,
US state law usually requires the publisher to accept that State's
law as the governing law, but in reverse we do not have the legal
power to insist upon the use of English law.
The significance of this situation for the Committee's
Enquiry into the structure of scholarly journal publishing lies,
I believe, in the power ACS and other publishers have in dictating
licensing terms through the ownership of copyright, assigned to
them by their authors. Some publishers exercise the ownership
of copyright in a responsible way but it is used by a few publishers
to dictate licensing terms which are unsatisfactory for library
users. In my opinion ACS act more like a commercial publisher
than a learned society publisher in their attitude to pricing
and licensing issues. After many months of negotiation with ACS
we were presented with a "take it or leave it" choice,
and the importance of the journals left us with no choice but
to accept unsatisfactory terms.
Closing statement : the opportunity for an improved
journal publishing system
The closing statement I wish to make to the
Committee is not about the problems in the current publishing
system, serious though those problems are, but about the opportunity
provided by networked access to academic journals to make changes
which will increase the value from taxpayer-funded research through
higher citation of published articles and easier access for readers.
The potential benefits to society and to individuals from opening
access to research literature are immense. Changes in the business
model to support such an open system are feasible, and publishers
have an opportunity to enter into these changes in a positive
way. Government support in assisting the transition from the current
restrictive toll-based model to an open access model can be justified
on the basis of more effective use of public funds. Funding agencies
have a role in re-shaping the current academic reward system to
encourage high-quality open access publication. The development
of publication outlets for authors wishing to make their content
available on open access is held back by the inertia in the current
publishing system and positive action is required to realise the
opportunity provided by the electronic networks. The opportunity
exists; it requires political will to bring the benefits to fruition.
May 2004
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