University College London is set to become the first of the top tier of elite European universities to make all its research available for free at the click of a mouse, in a model it hopes will spread across the academic world.
UCL’s move to “open access” for all research, subject to copyright law, could boost the opportunities for rapid intellectual breakthroughs if taken up by other universities, thereby increasing economic growth.
Paul Ayris, head of the UCL library and an architect of the plan to put all its research on a freely accessible UCL website, said he had backed open access because the existing system of having to visit a library or pay a subscription fee to see research in journals erected “barriers” to the use of research. “This is not good for society if you’re looking for a cure for cancer,” he said.
He said the recent weakness of the pound had made it harder for libraries to pay for journals priced in euros or dollars.
But some experts say using journals boosts efficiency by signalling to readers whether research is good or not.
Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “If you read something in the American Economic Review, there’s a presumption that its quality has been examined with great care, and the article isn’t rubbish. But if you have open access, people who are looking for things ... will find it very difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff.”
Plans for open access are at the mercy of the paid-for journals in which academics publish most of their work. Some experts say many journals currently insist on their right under copyright law to delay open access until a certain time, or refuse it altogether – rendering it difficult for UCL and other institutions to make all works freely available.
But universities are trying to persuade journal publishers to modify their rules. They do not want open access to replace journals, but to supplement them for non-subscribers.
The most famous global institution to move towards open access is Harvard, where some faculties have voted in favour of it.
A small number of other British universities, including Cardiff, are planning similar moves, partly to boost their global competitiveness by making their research better-known. Janet Peters, Cardiff’s head librarian, said: “We can have a shop window on the worldwide stage for the research that’s being done here.”
UCL will on Wednesday announce the establishment of a Publications Board that will implement the university’s policy. Mr Ayris expects to start by putting research done since 2001 on its open access “online repository”, eprints@ucl.ac.uk. He said enigmatically this would take “somewhere between” months and years.
Open access was agreed by UCL’s academic board last year. Some experts say individual academics at universities could in practice choose to opt out of open access.
Oxford University – in common with many other institutions – offers its dons the opportunity to publish their research for free online, through “opt-in open access”.