In Debate, British MP’s Chastise the Government over its Response to 2004 STM Inquiry
In 2004, open access became an important subject for the British Parliament, as the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, after four public hearings, voiced its support for exploration into open access, particularly institutional repositories. Then the official British government’s response almost entirely dismissed the committee’s work. More than a year later, in a public debate held last week, that report, Scientific Publications: Free For All?, returned briefly to Parliament’s spotlight again. The general consensus: that the government’s dismissal of the report and in fact its understanding of the report was wrong. MP Phil Willis, the new chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said he was “staggered by the level on interest and the intensity of feeling on the subject.” Issues touched on included the impact of digitization, the open access movement, the cost of library subscriptions, and the hefty profits of major commercial scientific publishers. At least one MP rose to the defense of publishers MP Edward Vaizey, within whose constituency resides Reed Elsevier, Blackwell, MacMillan, and Oxford University Press. “I do not accept that the problem lies with publishers,” Vaizey said, “and I do not accept there is an access crisis.” Vaizey said he was wary of the government intervening to “ensure a new model gains ground.”
While feelings may differ among MP, it seemed there was consensus that the government look again at the 2004 report. “It is fair to say the government’s response was curious,” Willis noted, adding that the government seemed to “argue against and reject the ‘author pays’ model as if it was what the committee proposed when it palpably was not.” Willis also slammed the government for doing nothing to support the establishment of institutional repositories. MP Brian Iddon bolstered Willis’s critique. “The government’s response was wrong,” he said flatly. “We were not recommending the ‘author pays’ model in our conclusions. All we were doing was to suggest the government should pay some attention to it.” The debate also featured some of the tart, quick-witted give-and-take famous in British Parliament and on display in the 2004 hearings. When Iddon shared a story of once publishing articles in the Journal of the Chemical Society, MP Ian Gibson, who chaired the initial STM hearings, interrupted. “For the record, I published in Nature,” Gibson interjected. “How does that rate in the citation index?” Iddon, amused, explained to the audience that “my honorable friend is trying to get one up on me, because Nature is one of the highest-impact journals.”
Transcript of debate:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm051215/halltext/51215h01.htm#51215h01_spnew45
Library Journal Academic Newswire, Dec 22, 2006
