1. ACHIEVING OPEN ACCESS TO UK RESEARCH : THE WORK OF THE JOINT INFORMATION SYSTEMS COMMITTEE Frederick J. Friend OSI Open Access Advocate JISC Consultant Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL f.friend@ucl.ac.uk

2. FAIR SUPPORT FOR ACCESS The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) intends to fund a number of projects to support access to and sharing of institutional content within Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and to allow intelligence to be gathered about the technical, organisational and cultural challenges of these processes. The Focus on Access to Information Resources (FAIR) programme will contribute to developing the mechanisms and supporting services to allow the submission and sharing of content generated by the HE/FE community. This programme is inspired by the vision of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The FAIR programme is part of a larger area of work being taken forward by the JISC. The JISC envisages the Information Environment as a place where members of the HE and FE community can place and share useful content. All of the quotes above from the FAIR Call for Proposals January 2002.

3. FAIR PROGRESS The JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) Programme is described at www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_fair.htmlwww.jisc.ac.uk/programme_fair.html Fourteen projects August 2002 – October 2005 Projects grouped into three clusters: e-prints and e-theses; museums and images; institutional portals No major technical problems experienced but most have experienced difficulty with cultural issues – e.g. the way in which authors can be encouraged to deposit pre-prints or post-prints

4. JISC SUPPORT FOR OPEN ACCESS OUTSIDE FAIR Discussions with HEFCE Discussions with Research Councils Submission to RAE review Support for publishers developing open access journals (BioMed Central deal, invitation to tender for subscription publishers in transition to open access) Investigation : author survey funded by JISC and OSI, invitation to tender for study on delivery models and architecture (e.g. is there a role for JISC in linking the content in UK university repositories?)

5. HOW CAN WE MAKE FURTHER PROGRESS? Establish repositories in every university : cost concerns need to be overcome Create structures to validate repositories, link them and harvest their content : overcome view that repository deposit is anarchic Establish expectation or requirement that reports resulting from all publicly-funded research will be available on open access (Parliamentary Enquiry, statements from research funding agencies) Develop reasonable relationship between deposit of pre-print/post- print and published journal article : overcome reluctance of publishers to allow deposit on open web-site and overcome academic fears that self-archiving will destroy their publication opportunities Establish more open access journals on viable business models : overcome fear that open access will destroy academic publishing and stop learned society support for scholarships etc.

6. WHAT CAN JISC CONTINUE TO DO? Lobby individuals and organizations (n.b. JISC has no power to force organizations to support open access) Provide funds to enable useful work to be undertaken Liaise with organizations in other countries also supporting open access (e.g. SPARC, SURF, OSI)