Public access, open archives:

A funder’s perspective

Dr Mark Walport

Director

Wellcome Trust

Wellcome Trust mission

“To foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health”

Funded by the Wellcome Trust and MRC

Why open access matters to us ...

Open access and the human genome

Why is open access publication important to research funders?

• Funding the research is a job only part done – a fundamental part of funders’ missions is to ensure the widest possible dissemination and unrestricted access to that research

• Over 90% of research funded in UK universities is public money (government, research councils and charities)

90% of NHS-funded research available online full text

30% immediately available to public

Only 40% immediately available to NHS staff

Submission to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Scientific Publications

Opposition to innovation is not new …

• 1408: Arundelian Constitutions (Oxford) against John Wycliffe and his work to publish the New Testament in English. These enactments forbade

“…upon pain of the greater excommunication the unauthorized translation of any text of the Scriptures into English or any other tongue by way of a book, pamphlet, treatise or the reading of such."

• 1850: The 1850 Public Libraries Act was the first of a series of Acts enabling local councils to provide free public libraries funded by a levy of a ½ d rate. Widely opposed in Parliament, because of the cost implications of the scheme, and the social transformation it might effect.

Opposition to innovation is not new …

2004:

• “… Speak to people in the medical profession, and they will say the last thing they want are people who may have illnesses reading this information, marching into surgeries and asking things. We need to be careful with this very, very high-level information.”

Oral evidence to House of Commons inquiry, March 1st 2004

But………

• 58% of patients in the USA consulting their physicians bring along information they accessed on the internet

Then …

… and now …

Why don’t researchersknow or care? Free

Publishers

LibrariesResearchers

Public funders

Free

Shareholders &

Societies£ Profit

£

£ £

Wellcome Trust mission?

The economic cycle of scientific publishing

Developments in web technology

• Enables creative ways of dissemination

• Not fully realised whilst access is mediated through subscriptions and bundle deals

Two routes to open access

Both need to be supported

• Publish in an open access format(Peer-reviewed Journal)

• Publish in a subscription journal but deposit a copy in an open access repository(Institution and/or Subject-based Central Repository)

Publish in an open access journal

• Immediate global availability• Increased usage (citation) improved

efficiency and impact• Archived for long term storage and access

• Few titles but growing • Not as well known – but impact growing• Resistance to the author pays model from

authors (passive), learned societies, commercial sector

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/publications

• Whole systems saving of 30%

• Estimated costs per article:o Publication fee $550 witho Submission fee $175

• Cost to funders: 1 - 2% of research budget

Will open access publishing cost more?

Publish in any journal but deposit a copy in an open access repositoryWhat do funders require?• Immediate access - but can work with 6 months delay to

allow market to adapt• Long-term digital archive - accurate, future-proof

preservation• Searchable - ‘under one roof’, subject-based• Build on existing research practice e.g. Medline• Funders’ attribution, additional features e.g. public

engagement• Links with other databases e.g. genes, proteins• Strategy, evaluation and impact

Developments in open archives• Increasing use of self-archival and digitisation

eg NIH, support from US Chamber of Commerce, House of Commons S & T Committee

• More support from funderseg Howard Hughes, Max Planck, CNRS, NIH, RCUK

• Digitisation projects eg partnership between Wellcome Library, JISC, National Library of Medicine

• Development of a European PubMed Central

UK PMC – Portable PubMed Central

• Aim: To develop a PubMed Central portal in the UK that will create a stable, permanent digital archive of peer-reviewed biomedical research publications that is accessible for free via the Internet

• Department of Health, MRC, BBSRC, JISC, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation, Arthritis Research Campaign, Wellcome Trust, AMRC

• Mirror the data from USA, Japan, France – collaboration and competition

Source: David Lipman, Director, National Centre for Biotechnology Information, NLM, USA

Link to imaging agent in PubChem through MeSH

Source: David Lipman, Director, National Centre for Biotechnology Information, NLM, USA

Links between sequence and related proteins

Funder initiatives

• Leadership - demonstrate engagement with issues, join with other research funders, raise awareness in research community

• Fund - cost of publication (marginal to research costs)

• Copyright - encourage (and eventually enforce) author retention (involve publishers and IPR lawyers)

• Repository - establish open access repositories and self-archiving (at what point mandatory?)

• Evaluation - recognise intrinsic value of content of paper rather than title of journal

• Digitization - of existing titles

Greater accessibility = Greater impact of research

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/strategy/spotlight