Open access : policy and advocacy

Abstract(s)

The CERN Workshop on Scholarly Innovations (OAI4) included about 30 participants from a variety of open access related backgrounds. Some were involved in institutional repositories at various stages, from mature repositories with mandated self-archiving policies to new or planned repositories. There was much interest in copyright issues, and the more experienced group members felt that the approach appreciated most by faculty was assistance in negotiating their rights with publishers, for example using the standard authors' addendum developed by SPARC U.S. Some participants were from the subject repository community (E-LIS, PubMed). Potential differences of viewpoint between the two approaches were identified, but seen as superficial differences which could be overcome. A representative from a funding agency suggested that the funding agency monies for open access charges could perhaps be leveraged to free up funds for non-funded researchers. The author concludes with an afterthought along these lines, that is, if publishers are receiving revenues from processing fees for funded researchers, subscription fees should decrease; these funds could then be diverted to a fund to pay for further processing fees.