The academic community is in the middle of a massive debate on how people should be able to access the results of publicly funded research.
It may be a coincidence, but the growth of the world wide web has coincided with a massive public debate on "open access". With many researchers and groups maintaining their own web sites, albeit sometimes many years out of date, there are opportunities to slap up research papers for the outside world to read. This has massive implications for the traditional research journals.
The House of Commons in the UK has already picked over this and produced a report on the subject. Now Research Councils UK – the "union" of the UK's Research Councils – have updated their position.
This seems to be a discipline dependent issue, so each RC is working on its own approach. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the RC we watch most closely, gives some idea of the complexity in its own statement:
"The issues are complex. They range from ascertaining who publishes research information and who pays for it to be published, deciding where it should be published (the internet has completely changed the way we disseminate information) to determining how we assess the validity and quality of published findings. In addition, decisions have to be made on where and how this information will be archived and who pays for its long-term storage?"
This is one of the topics we keep meaning to look into in more depth. But it all looks very complicated, and it is hard to know what it means for the innovation community.
EPSRC tells us that "Research Councils UK has, in collaboration with the Research Information Network and the Department of Trade and Industry, commissioned an analysis of the availability and quality of data on scholarly journals publishing."
Don't expect rapid action. EPSRC warns that "an independent study will start late in 2006 and report in late 2008. Once this has been completed a full assessment of all the factors and implications can be made. This will include the question of whether the mandatory deposit of papers in repositories is a beneficial and cost effective option."
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