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- viii. universities, funders, publishers, and learned societies should continue to work together to promote further experimentation in open access publishing for scholarly monographs;
- ix. the infrastructure of subject and institutional repositories should be developed so that they play a valuable role complementary to formal publishing, particularly in providing access to research data and to grey literature, and in digital preservation;.
- x. funders’ limitations on the length of embargo periods, and on any other restrictions on access to content not published on open access terms, should be considered carefully, to avoid undue risk to valuable journals that are not funded in the main by APCs. Rules should be kept under review in the light of the available evidence as to their likely impact on such journals.
4. What needs to be done
Implementing our recommendations will require changes in policy and practice by all stakeholders. More broadly, what we propose implies cultural change: a fundamental shift in how research is published and disseminated. A new shared understanding needs to develop of the interlocking roles of the various parties: researchers, policy-makers, funders, university managers, librarians, publishers and other intermediaries.
Our recommendations are presented as a balanced package, so it is critical that they are implemented in a balanced and sustainable way, with continuing close contact and dialogue between representatives of each of the key groups, and regular assessment of key indicators of progress. In the list of key actions below, we indicate where we believe primary responsibility lies.
Key actions: overall policy and funding arrangements
- i. Make a clear commitment to support the costs of an innovative and sustainable research communications system , with a clear preference for publication in open access or hybrid journals. (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities)
- ii. Consider how best to fund increases in access during a transition period through all three channels—open access publications, subscriptions, and repositories—and the balance of funding to be provided through additional money from the public purse, by diversion of funds from support of other features of the research process, and by seeking efficiency savings and other reductions in costs from publishers and other intermediaries. (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities)
- iii. Put in place arrangements to gather and analyse reliable, high-quality and agreed indicators of key features of the changing research communications landscape, and to review those indicators and the lessons to be drawn from them. (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities, publishers)
- iv. Keep under review the position of learned societies that rely on publishing revenues to fund their core activities, the speed with which they can change their publishing business models, and the impact on the services they provide to the UK research community. (Government, Funding Councils, Research Councils, learned societies, publishers)
