[Open-access] BIS open access inquiry

[Ross Mounce]

Dear lists,


Following-on the House of Lords
inquiry<http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/open-access/>,
there is also a Business, Innovation and Skills Committee inquiry into the
new RCUK open access mandate. A fair few of the 70 or so written evidence
submissions<http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/science-technology/Openaccess/OpenAccessevidence.pdf>
 to the House of Lords inquiry were quite misguided in my opinion and few
were from active researchers like myself.

I was wondering therefore if you would perhaps consider submitting some
written evidence to the BIS inquiry, further details
here<http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-innovation-and-skills/news/committee-announces-an-inquiry-into-open-access/>
.

The Committee will consider a range of topics including:

   - The Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Finch Group
   Report ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to
   research publications’, including its preference for the ‘gold’ over the
   ‘green’ open access model;
   - Rights of use and re-use in relation to open access research
   publications, including the implications of Creative Commons ‘CC-BY’
   licences;
   - The costs of article processing charges (APCs) and the implications
   for research funding and for the taxpayer; and
   - The level of ‘gold’ open access uptake in the rest of the world versus
   the UK, and the ability of UK higher education institutions to remain
   competitive.

Written evidence should be sent to the Committee, as an MS Word document,
by e-mail to biscommem at parliament.uk.
The deadline for BIS submissions is 7 February 2013.

I am particularly concerned about the confusion in many recent blog posts
in certain quarters over what Creative Commons licences actually do. Some
have been attempting to portray the CC Attribution licence (CC BY)  as
against 'author rights' or against 'academic freedom'. It would be good to
make clear the benefits of this, perhaps even in terms of economics.


This is a rare opportunity for for our voices to be heard. We should not
waste this opportunity. Academic publishers will almost certainly be
submitting their viewpoints and interests, so we need to make sure our
interests are represented too.


Best,

Ross


-- 
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Ross Mounce
PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://about.me/rossmounce
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