Transcript Document

Open Access – a funder’s
perspective
Robert Terry
Senior Policy Adviser
The Wellcome Trust
One of the world’s largest medical research charities
Planned expenditure in 2002/03 of c £500 million
Supports more than
5,000 researchers
at 400 locations in
42 different countries
Funding major initiatives in
public engagement with science
and SciArt projects
The UK’s leading supporter of research
into the History of Medicine
Human genome project
Funded by
the Wellcome
Trust
Where do Trust-funded researchers publish?
University
Press
24%
Journals with
> 30 papers
1995 - 1999*
Elsevier
Portland Press
CUP
Blackwell
OUP
Nature
Society
43%
*Source: ROD
Commercial
33%
Total Trust papers
n=16,646
in 1292 journals
10%
5%
5%
4%
4%
3%
SQW Economic analysis of scientific
research publishing
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/
scipubreport
The economic
cycle of
scientific
publishing
Publishers
£ Profit
Shareholder
s & Societies
£
Free
Free
£
Libraries
£
Public
funders
& HEFCE
Alternative model - open access

The copyright holder(s) must grant to the public a
free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy,
distribute and make derivative works, in any
medium for any purpose.

A digital copy must be deposited in an open
public archival repository (for example US
National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central).
Funder initiatives

Leadership - demonstrate engagement with issues, join
with other research funders, raise awareness in research
community, fund research

Fund - cost of publication (marginal to research costs)

Copyright - encourage (and eventually enforce) author
retention (involve publishers and IPR lawyers)

Repository – eprint, open access (post journal review)

Digitization project – 12+ journals £1.25 m PubMed
Central

Evaluation - recognise intrinsic value of content of paper
rather than title of journal
The future

More of the same? - unlikely

Increased use of repositories - likely

More support from funders? - very likely
e.g.Howard Hughes, Max Planck, CNRS,
WHO.....NIH(?)

Tipping point?

UK Parliament S&T Committee Inquiry