From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 10:02:48 +0100

Although the history of the Open Access movement can be traced back to
at least 1994 (or even earlier), its birth is widely held to have
taken place at the 2001 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
Certainly, it was at this point that the term "open access" was first
used.

The BOAI emerged from a meeting held in Budapest that had been
organised by George Soros' then named Open Society Institute (OSI).
The OSI also kick-started the movement with a grant of $3 million.

OSI's involvement has allowed a great deal to be achieved over the
last ten years. However, much remains to be done. So in February this
year OSI - now known as the Open Society Foundations (OSF) - organised
a second Budapest meeting (BOAI-10).

Here a "diverse coalition" of OA publishers, funders, librarians,
scholarly societies, infrastructure managers, advocates and
strategists reaffirmed and refreshed the BOAI, and subsequently drew
up 28 recommendations "to make research freely available to all
online". These recommendations were finally published on Wednesday.

It is worth noting that a great deal has happened in the OA space this year.

We have seen the rise and fall of the infamous Research Works Act
(RWA). We have witnessed the so-called Academic Spring - which
included a boycott by researchers of Elsevier, the world's largest
subscription publisher. We have seen a US petition in favour of OA
attract more than 25,000 signatures. And we have seen the publication
of the Finch Report in the UK, followed by the announcement of a new
OA policy from Research Councils UK (RCUK). Finally, the European
Commission has made a new commitment to "improve access to scientific
information produced in Europe."

However, this is not all good news. The Finch Report and the RCUK OA
policy in particular have proved highly controversial, with OA critics
expressing great concern that they will prove counter-productive, and
could "set worldwide open access back by at least a decade".

One intriguing question that arises from the policy errors of
Finch/RCUK is whether they might have been avoided had the BOAI-10
recommendations been published earlier in the year. After all, as OA
advocate Stevan Harnad points out, RCUK's policy is in direct
contradiction with these recommendations.

We might also wonder whether, in the wake of Finch/RCUK, OA advocates
can any longer maintain that OA will resolve the affordability problem
that led many to join the OA movement in the first place.

BOAI-10 was chaired by Alma Swan, the director of European advocacy
for SPARC. This week I published an email interview with Swan about
the meeting and the recommendations - a discussion that inevitably
raised the above questions in my mind.

Swan argues that OA can be cheaper, so long as it is "properly
supported by sensible policy". She adds, "[t]he cheapest transition to
OA for the UK is through a primarily green route, and several studies
have confirmed that."

This, of course, goes to the heart of the concerns about Finch and the
RCUK policy, since both maintain that gold OA should become the main
vehicle for scholarly publishing in future, and both relegate green OA
self-archiving to a bit player.

As a result, some argue, OA can no longer be expected to lower costs,
but rather to increase them. By how much will it increase them? Harnad
predicts that the UK research community's publishing costs will likely
rise by 6% as a result of the RCUK policy.

We can but hope that the publication of the BOAI-10 recommendations
will refocus policy-makers' minds on the affordability issue, and that
RCUK will rethink its erroneous policy as a result.

The Q&A interview with Swan can be read here:

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/budapest-open-access-initiative.html