Michael Banks examines the impact of a new open-access policy announced last month by UK Research and Innovation
The largest funding body in the UK has announced a new open-access policy that will come into effect on 1 April 2022. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the umbrella group for the UK’s seven research councils – will from that date mandate that all published papers written by researchers containing work carried out using UKRI cash must be free to read immediately upon publication. Yet the announcement has been met with concern by some publishers and researchers.
Open-access (OA) publishing has grown rapidly over the last two decades, especially in the UK, where 90% of articles published by researchers are now expected to be open access by the end of 2021. With an £8bn budget, UKRI is a supporter of the Europe-wide “Plan S” open-access initiative, which was unveiled in 2018 by 11 national research funding organizations, including UKRI. They say that all scientific publications resulting from research funded by them must be published in “compliant” open-access journals or on open-access platforms.
Traditionally, scholarly publishing has been free for authors, with publishers charging libraries journal subscription fees. The new UKRI policy mirrors Plan S’s aims, stating it will support researchers to publish either in “gold” open-access journals or in “hybrid” journals, in which “transformative agreements” with publishers allow universities to pay lump-sum fees to cover both subscription costs and to publish open access. Flipping the switch: how a hybrid journal went open access
If no such agreement exists, UKRI will not pay the article-processing charge (APC) that is required to make the paper open access. Authors could publish in a traditional, non-open-access subscription journal but the author must then self-archive the accepted manuscript in an open repository under no embargo. Previous UKRI policy had permitted a six or 12-month embargo period before the paper could be submitted to such a repository.
IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, broadly welcomes the UKRI’s new open-access policy, which it says “aligns with our mission to expand physics globally”. However, it thinks that the requirement for researchers to deposit the final version of a manuscript in a repository under no embargo will be “harmful to the significant OA progress already made”. “This approach cannot form the basis for an economically viable publishing model for physics journals seeking to maintain the highest standards of peer review and publication.”
That view is echoed by the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), which says it is “deeply concerned” that the UKRI policy gives equivalent status to the “subscription-tied accepted manuscript and the full OA publication of the version of record”. This, the STM says, could “jeopardize the continued progress of the open-access publishing transition by enabling an entirely unsustainable route”. The STM urges the UKRI board to “carefully consider these issues”. Physics societies call for sustainable approach to open access
John Harnad, director of the mathematical physics lab at the Centre de recherches mathématiques in Montreal, says that although the UKRI policy is well-intentioned, it fails to “provide a coherent strategy”, in particular when providing “any incentive or encouragement” for green open access. “UK scientific publishing does not operate in isolation, but as part of an international mix of authors, readers and subscribers,” he says, “Such a strategy seems solely to be a reaction to the continued rises in both subscription charges and article processing charges. But in fact, it would contribute nothing to counteracting the rising charges. And, given the international mix, it would not have sufficient impact to convince publishers of major journals to abandon their current policies and be ‘reborn’ as 100% OA journals.”
Meanwhile, the American Astronomical Society announced last week that from January 2022 all its journals will switch to being fully open access. Since 2017, the AAS journals, which are published by IOP Publishing, have provided a hybrid open access option, allowing authors the choice to publish their articles traditionally or open access. “We’ve seen that articles published open access in our journals are on average more widely cited than those that are paywalled,” says AAS chief publishing officer Julie Steffen. “The transition of all our journals from hybrid to fully open access in January will provide this same wide audience access to the entire cosmos.”
Q&A with IOP Publishing chief executive Antonia Seymour
How will the no-embargo aspect of the UK Research and Innovation’s new policy affect the move to OA?
Publication of articles costs money. Before any articles are even accepted for publication, journal editorial teams engage with their research communities to develop an appropriate scientific scope and direction for a journal, and to maintain an active, engaged and informed editorial board and network of peer reviewers. The editorial teams coordinate efficient and rigorous peer review in accordance with the latest standards for publication ethics and research integrity and use ever-evolving online editorial systems. These activities require trained, professional staff supported by increasingly complex technologies, as well as the necessary management, legal, financial and administrative overheads. It is therefore not economically viable for high-quality physics journals to provide entirely free and unrestricted distribution of accepted manuscripts, without any alternative and sustainable means of funding peer review and publication costs. Given the demonstrable progress towards full open access in the UK, I, along with many others have questioned the need to introduce this controversial component of the policy given it will undermine both subscription and open access business models. Why pay to subscribe to an article or to make it open access when a freely available substitute already exists?
What impact could the new policy have on researchers themselves – will they, for example, have sufficient funds to pay for it?
There’s a high risk of author confusion in trying to navigate the requirements imposed upon them by their funder and squaring those with what publishers offer. UKRI’s policy excludes the publication of funded research in journals where there is no transitional/transformative arrangement in place and where the publisher cannot support zero embargo publication of accepted manuscripts. That limits where authors who don’t have funds to pay the APC charges themselves can publish. IOP Publishing has a transitional agreement in place with JISC, but not all specialist and learned society publishers do.
What next steps will IOP Publishing be taking to respond to the new policy?
Learned societies, like the Institute of Physics, exist to ensure that physics delivers on its exceptional potential to benefit society. We recognise the important role of universal access to knowledge in achieving this goal and are therefore committed to making open access to physics research a reality. We welcome the increased policy momentum towards open publishing practices and are turning our attention to ensuring an effective implementation of the new UKRI policy – one that maximises funding for full open access publication of the “version of record” (gold), that will preserve the necessary choice physicists have in where to publish, and maintains the rigorous publication standards upon which researchers rely.
