Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Royal Entomological Society
Following on from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into Open Access (OA) publishing, I believe that the BIS Committee will hold a similar inquiry and is asking for written submissions.
As the Editorial officer for the Royal Entomological Society (RES), I would like to respond on their behalf.
1. Firstly, as a not for profit Learned Society, we rely on surpluses generated by publication of our well respected peer-reviewed Journals to fund our charitable aim of disseminating entomology. This includes funding meetings for professional entomologists (with extra support for student participants) and organising National Insect Week and Insect Festivals to bring entomology to a wide public audience. The loss of income resulting from OA will severely curtail our activities. Another primary source of income for the RES is Membership/Fellowship subscriptions but we keep these to a minimum to allow the widest possible access to our Society.
2. As a society we could chose to opt out of OA publication for our Journals but if government funds for research are subject to the proviso that results be published in an OA format, we would obviously lose important papers to rival Journals especially those published outside of the UK.
3. The proposed embargo periods would help but must be specific to the scientific discipline. For RES publications, where the subject matter is very long lived, we would need it to be at least 12 months.
4. Our Fellows are particularly concerned about the effect of the proposals on their academic freedom. The limited funds for Article Publication Charges (APCs) available to Universities/Research Institutes will mean that many will have to “ration” the number of papers that an author can publish. This will threaten academic freedom and may result in “impact” being a higher priority than the quality of the work itself. Indeed the requirement for APCs will create inequality across the academic community by linking prestige in research and its publication with the ability to pay APCs.
5. We foresee that there are going to be problems with papers where there are multiple authors from different Institutions and with different funding sources. This may mean less collaboration which would be bad for entomological research and indeed for science generally.
6. The requirement for papers published using APCs to be subject to a Creative Commons Public Licence (which enables anyone to view, edit, modify, translate and distribute works worldwide, provided that they credit the original author) should be of particular concern to both authors and Institutions. It removes their rights to, and ability to control, the use of their intellectual property. What guidance is offered by BIS and RCUK on respecting the rights of non HEFCE or RCUK co-funders? Research communities have for many years been under pressure to find funding from industry partners, the mandated application of a CC-BY licence may well breech existing arrangements and preclude future partnerships, effectively closing doors to commercial funding of UK science. We believe that the decision on CC-BY should be uncoupled from the requirement for OA publication and deferred subject to a rigorous study set up to access the implications and cost/benefits to the UK and all UK stakeholders.
Prof Linda M Field PhD, FRES, FSB
Royal Entomological Society Editorial Officer and Head of Department of Biological Chemistry and Crop Protection
Rothamsted Research
30 January 2013