The Finch Report: UCL’s David Price Responds

The much-awaited report from the Finch Committee was published today. The Committee, headed up by Dame Janet Finch, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, was set up last year by UK Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts, and tasked with establishing how access to research could be expanded.

David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research)

The good news: the Report recommends that all publicly funded research should be made freely available on an Open Access (OA) basis, and that the traditional model — which currently sees much research locked behind a subscription paywall — should be phased out.

The bad news: the Report estimates that this will require the higher education sector to find an extra £50-60 million a year to disseminate its research.  

The bulk of this extra money will be needed in order to pay for researchers to publish in so-called Gold OA and Hybrid OA journals. Instead of billing readers for access to research papers, as subscription journals do, OA journals bill authors, or their funders or institutions, for publishing papers — by means of article-processing charges (APCs).

These charges range from $305 to $3,930 per article, and are the price publishers demand for making research papers freely available on the Internet.

Some have greeted the Report with enthusiasm. Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, the world's second largest private funder, commented. “We are delighted that the Finch Report encourages the UK to embrace open access, something that we at the Wellcome Trust feel very strongly about. There is a real groundswell of opinion in support of open access in the UK, the USA, Europe and beyond and this is a real opportunity for the UK to lead the way.”

Others are far less enthusiastic, arguing that by failing to support and promote Green OA (aka self-archiving), the Committee missed an important opportunity to push for a more cost-effective solution.

With Green OA, authors continue to publish in subscription journals (without payment), but make their papers freely available on the Internet by self-archiving them in an institutional repository— usually after an embargo period intended to allow the publisher to recoup the publication costs through the subscription.

Many OA advocates believe that Green OA is a much less costly route to OA. Publishers dislike it intensely.

A hard place

“The Finch Report is a successful case of lobbying by publishers to protect the interests of publishing at the expense of the interests of research and the public that funds research,” argues University of Southampton cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad. “The Finch Report proposes doing precisely what the US Research Works Act (RWA) — since discredited and withdrawn — failed to do: to push ‘Green’ OA self-archiving (by authors, and Green OA self-archiving mandates by authors’ funders and institutions) off the UK policy agenda as inadequate and ineffective and, to boot, likely to destroy both publishing and peer review — and to replace them instead with a vague, slow evolution toward ‘Gold’ OA publishing, at the publishers’ pace and price.”

Whatever one’s views about the conclusions reached by the Finch Committee, and whatever one feels about the relative merits of Green and Gold OA (see here for instance), if the Report’s recommendations are implemented it will put UK universities in a hard place. For it is they who will have to find much of the extra money needed, at a time when their budgets are already under huge pressure.

Unsurprisingly, therefore the Vice-Provost (Research) at University College London (UCL) David Price is not best pleased. “The result of the Finch recommendations would be to cripple university systems with extra expense,” he told me. “Finch is certainly a cure to the problem of access, but is it not a cure which is actually worse than the disease?”

Price’s message to David Willetts is simple: more work needs to be done to find an adequate solution. “Listen to UCL’s response to Finch and carry on talking to get the best transitional model from where we are now to a fully OA world,” he suggests. “The Finch recommendations are only part of the answer.”

For more of Price’s views read on.

Q&A with David Price

RP:  Did UCL have a representative on the Finch Committee?

DP: No, but we did submit recommendations, and I was asked to comment on a draft.

RP:  So was UCL represented by a national university body then?

DP: We were not “represented”, but Adam Tickell, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, was on the Committee and he kept Russell GroupHEIs in the loop.

RP:  Would it be accurate to say that you support the principle of Open Access, but you have reservations about the recommendations in the Finch Report?

DP:Yes, that is correct.

RP:  What (from your perspective) are the most significant recommendations made in the Report?

DP:The one which would have the most effect is that for a move to Gold OA.

RP: This is the recommendation that Gold OA become the “main vehicle” for the publication of research?

DP:Yes. Economic modelling shows that, for research universities, the Green route to OA is more cost effective than the Gold. Under Gold Research Councils and Universities will have to find millions of pounds in existing budgets to fund OA charges. That means that some things will have to stop to make the necessary monies available.

Financial implications

RP: So if the Gold OA recommendation is implemented what exactly would be the financial implications for UCL?

DP:UCL would have to re-model existing budgets to find the monies to fund APCs, where the researcher is not funded by a research grant. Modelling by economic experts shows that this is millions of pounds.

RP:  What budgets do you anticipate would have to be cut in order to find the extra money?

DP: No consideration has been given to this question.

RP:  Would the impact on the humanities be different from the impact on the sciences?

DP: Yes. The Finch recommendations are not good news for the Humanities, whose unit of publication is characteristically the research monograph. Who will publish Gold OA monographs, and who will pay for them?

RP:  Can you clarify where the extra expense will come from: is it that universities will find they have (for a period of time at least) to pay both subscriptions and APCs? What OA advocates call “double dipping”?

DP: Unless subscription prices come down as Gold OA fees are paid, then Universities will have to pay twice — to help cover Gold OA APCs and for subscription to the journal.

RP:  Publishers are claiming (e.g. here) that the Finch Report could destroy a £1billion industry that employs 10,000 people here and in its overseas operations. How does that claim square with your belief that universities would end up paying publishers more?

DP: No comment, as UCL has not seen the evidence which the publishers would use to back their claim.

RP:  Do you think you are in a minority in your concerns about the Finch Report, or are most UK universities, or at least other Russell Group universities, likely to be similarly concerned?

DP:Most Russell Group Universities will have the same concerns, because we all face the same challenges.

RP:  To get back to basics for a minute, what is the problem that OA is intended to solve?

DP:The problem is that researchers can find material on the Internet, but not necessarily access the full-text.

RP:  You feel the Finch recommendations fall short of addressing this problem?

DP: The result of the Finch recommendations would be to cripple university systems with extra expense. Finch is certainly a cure to the problem of access, but is it not a cure which is actually worse than the disease?

Different scenario

RP: An OA advocate said to me, “Every which way to provide access is recommended in the Finch Report (at additional cost to the UK) except the solution we have been promoting for the past decade or so — Open Access.” I assumed they meant Green OA. Would it have made more sense for the Finch Committee to recommend that Green OA become the main vehicle for achieving OA?

DP:What Finch should have done is to model Green and Gold together, to see which works out cheaper. A forthcoming report from the JISC’s Open Access Implementation Group on the impact of APC charges on universities does this — and comes up with a different scenario to Finch.

RP:  Can you say in broad outline how the JISC scenario differs?

DP:It is cheaper for universities, on current economic modelling. And Green OA is more in line with the stipulations of the EU Horizon 2020 funding programme.

RP: One thing that puzzles me is that UCL and the other Russell Group universities have in recent years invested a significant amount of money in institutional repositories to support Green OA; and they have introduced policies to promote self-archiving. As a result, these repositories have provided almost all the UK’s OA literature to date. Yet the Finch Report appears to be recommending that they now be consigned to a role of providing access to data and grey literature only, and for preservation. Has the Finch study overlooked or ignored the investments made in repositories, and the role that they could play in providing OA do you think?

DP: Yes. Repositories can indeed be used for marketing, and to promote grey literature — reports, theses. But there is a scenario where they can carry the whole of a university’s research output and make that available in OA at a fraction of the cost of Gold OA.

National licensing

RP:  Why do you think the Finch Committee came up with the recommendations it did? Do you feel it understood the issues adequately?

DP: UCL is keen to promote the idea of a true national license. Finch goes part of the way to address this for various sectors — but this is not a true national license. Finch says that a fully national license for commercial content would be too expensive. But where is the economic modelling to prove this? Finch provides none. So it is a missed opportunity, as national licensing is a transitional step to an OA world.

RP: How would the national licensing model you refer to work? It might seem to imply some form of “big deal” arrangement. Is that correct?

DP: National licences are the preferred way forward in the immediate future for many Russell Group Universities. They exist in other European countries. For an agreed amount, publishers allow access to their content by all sectors in society. UCL sees this as a transition step to full Open Access. Initial discussions suggest that the cost of national licensing would be cheaper than the Gold OA Finch is recommending.

RP: Many OA advocates maintain that open access is a much cheaper way of publishing research, and so promises financial savings for universities. Might it be that the cost increases you anticipate from the Finch Report would be only transitional, and that in the long run universities would realise significant financial gains? Indeed, I think this is what the Finch Report anticipates. No gain without pain perhaps?

DP: Economic modelling does show significant savings in the whole publishing system if the whole world were 100% OA. But these savings fall in different parts of the system, not necessarily on University budgets. In the current economic climate, Universities have to look their position in the short term, as well as the long.

Only part of the answer

RP: What do you think those who disagree with the Finch recommendations can/should do? Will you be formally registering your personal objections?

DP:UCL will make its position clear in a number of fora — the Russell Group, in news briefings such as this one.

RP: Do you expect that the recommendations will eventually be implemented, whatever objections might be raised by the research community?

DP:UCL expects an honest and open debate, where the weaknesses in the present recommendations can be laid bare.

RP:  Might the Finch Report have the effect of souring the research community’s appetite for OA?

DP:Yes, in certain areas.

RP:  What is your message to the man who set up the Finch Committee, David Willetts?

DP:Listen to UCL’s response to Finch and carry on talking to get the best transitional model from where we are now to a fully OA world. The Finch recommendations are only part of the answer.

Director of UCL Library Services Paul Ayris comments on the Finch Report here

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Open Access Mandates: Ensuring Compliance

Three years ago, I wondered aloud how we should judge the success of an Open Access (OA) mandate. In particular, I wondered what level of compliance it was reasonable to expect a mandate to attain, and pointed out that OA advocates believe it is possible to achieve a 70% compliance rate within two years, if the mandate is compulsory.

It is therefore striking that, although the Wellcome Trust has had a compulsory mandate in place since 2006, The Times Higher Education reported in March that the Trust is still only achieving a 55% compliance rate. As a result, The Times Higher added, Wellcome’s head of digital services Robert Kiley wants to get tough on those who do not comply. The current situation, said Kiley, is “simply not acceptable”.

Elsewhere, Nature reported that of the 55% of researchers who comply with Wellcome’s mandate, 85% do so by means of Gold OA. One benefit of Gold OA, presumably, is that the author can hope to pass responsibility for compliance over to the publisher. While this does require paying a Gold OA fee, the Trust will pay this fee for the researcher. However, that 85% figure might seem to suggest that authors are more reluctant to comply with a mandate than some assume.

In my 2009 blog post I also reported that when, in 2008, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) upgraded its request that researchers deposit their published papers into PubMed Central (PMC) into a requirement, compliance accelerated to 49% by the end of the year (from 19%).

In order to establish what level of compliance the NIH is achieving today, I contacted its Office of Extramural Research (ORE). Below is the (slightly edited) transcript of the email conversation I had, which was split over a number of emails.

The upshot is that the NIH is now achieving 75% compliance. 

This invites a question: Why is NIH proving more successful in achieving compliance than the Wellcome Trust? Here are some quick thoughts:

• NIH is the largest public funder of medical research in the world, and so perhaps has greater authority than the Wellcome Trust

• NIH has been more proactive in ensuring compliance

• Where the Wellcome Trust insists that any embargo imposed by a publisher is no longer than six months, the NIH still permits embargoes to be up to 12 months (so perhaps publishers are more willing to post NIH-funded papers in PMC?)

As I say, these are just initial thoughts. I welcome comments from others.

One thing I find noteworthy is that, while the NIH clearly takes a close interest in compliance levels, it does not collect statistics on enforcement actions. With the growth in compliance now apparently levelling off at NIH, this would surely be useful information — and not just for NIH itself, but also for other funders like the Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK  (RCUK), both of whom are currently looking to beef up their open access policies.

Q&A with NIH

RP: Can you give me some information on the current compliance rates for the NIH Public Access Policy, and explain how the NIH ensures compliance?

NIH: OSTP has submitted a report to Congress that included a current overview of the NIH policy, compliance level and impacts on Page 12.

Our current compliance efforts have been focused on outreach and engagement with institutions and publishers, as outlined on pages 3 and 4 of David Lipman's testimony to Congress in 2010.

RP: Ok, so after reading these documents I conclude the following:

1. The initial voluntary policy saw compliance rates of 19%.

2. The mandatory policy (introduced in April 2008) saw compliance grow to 49% by the end of 2008, 70% by the end of 2009 and currently stands at 75%.

3. In order to increase compliance the NIH has a) engaged in awareness programs; b) improved its ability to track papers resulting from NIH research awards; c) developed new systems to assist sponsored research offices at universities and medical research centres in tracking their compliance; d) improved the submission process for authors by i) co-opting publishers to deposit for authors and ii) introducing the NIH Manuscript Submission System.

NIH: To be clear, we introduced the NIH manuscript submission system in 2005. We have made modifications and improved our guidance, but it is not new.

We don't think it is accurate to say that we have 'co-opted' publishers, as the NIH policy does not apply to them.

RP:  Why do you think publishers agree to deposit papers for authors?

NIH: We generally hear three reasons why some publishers take an active role:

1) They want to be on PMC because of its high visibility, integration with other resources, and secure and free archiving — many journals do this for all their content, regardless of whether it falls under the NIH public access policy

2) They want to provide a service to their authors

3) They want greater control over the version posted to PMC (some want only the published version posted, and others want only the final peer-reviewed manuscript posted)

Green or Gold?

RP: Can you say what percentage of the papers deposited in PubMed Central are papers that have been published in a subscription journal and then self-archived (i.e. Green OA) and what percentage have been published in an OA journal for a fee (i.e. Gold OA)?

NIH: We do not characterize PubMed Central (PMC) deposits in terms of green and gold Open Access (OA). PMC is more than a repository for papers resulting from NIH-funded research.  See here.

All 2.4 million PMC articles are available without charge on PMC. This number includes about 225,000 author manuscripts, and the rest are final published versions that have been provided to PMC by publishers.

We do not have a simple way of generating counts of which papers are from subscription based journals and which are not. However, to put the above numbers in context, note also that close to half of the articles in PMC are from the digitized (scanned) issues of journals from the period between the mid-1800s and the mid to late 1990s — predating the birth of OA journals and the NIH public access policy.

About 450,000 articles make up the PMC OA subset. The term Gold OA generally refers to articles that are available under a very open license (such as CC-BY) and involve an open access fee charged to authors. The articles in the PMC OA subset come with a variety of licenses, not just CC-BY.

In addition, some of these OA articles are from journals that, to our knowledge, don't charge an OA fee — the Rockefeller Press journals, for example here. 

Enforceable?

RP:  I came across a message on the Liblicence mailing list recently from someone who appeared to have concluded that there is no real force behind the NIH policy. Would it be accurate to say that the NIH currently has no way of enforcing compliance?

NIH: The NIH Public Access policy is a term and condition of award.  As we state in our FAQ: A grantee's failure to comply with the terms and conditions of award may cause NIH to take one or more enforcement actions, depending on the severity and duration of the non-compliance. NIH will undertake any such action in accordance with applicable statutes, regulations, and policies.

NIH generally will afford the grantee an opportunity to correct the deficiencies before taking enforcement action unless public health or welfare concerns require immediate action.

However, even if a grantee is taking corrective action, NIH may take proactive action to protect the Federal government's interests, including placing special conditions on awards or precluding the grantee from obtaining future awards for a specified period, or may take action designed to prevent future non-compliance, such as closer monitoring. See Enforcement Actions in the NIH Grants Policy Statement (11/03).

RP: Can you tell me how many researchers have received research funds for the last five years, and then give me annual figures on enforcement actions that have been taken against researchers who have  failed to comply with the public access policy. E.g. how many enforcement letters have been sent out, how many researchers have had special conditions placed on their awards, and how many have been precluded from obtaining future awards for a specified period (and for how long a period)?

NIH: We funded over 228,000 grants in the past 5 years, which support hundreds of thousands of investigators. NIH public access policies have been developed centrally, and compliance activities are carried out by individual NIH institutes and centers.

There are currently terms and conditions which require institutions to comply with the public access policy. When an investigator is found out of compliance with the NIH public access policy, the NIH institute or center in which the award resides will send out letters to bring the investigator into compliance.

NIH does not currently collect statistics on compliance efforts.

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The OA interviews: Carlos Rossel, Publisher at the World Bank

Carlos Rossel

“The Bank is committed to sharing our data, knowledge and analysis with others in the search for development solutions. By making Bank research and knowledge products published by the Bank available libre OA, third parties are free to use, reuse, and build upon the Bank’s work in ways that can lead to innovative solutions to local development problems.”

When Jim Yong Kim takes office as the new president of the World Bank on 1^st July, he will be the first development professional to head the Bank. That is new. But it is not all that is new at the World Bank. The new president will inherit an organisation that has undergone a lot of navel gazing over the past few years. Its conclusion: the Bank needs to rethink the way it operates.

The outgoing president of the Bank Robert Zoellick gave some insight into the Bank’s internal deliberations in a speech at Georgetown University in September 2010. Significantly, Zoellick acknowledged that pushing top-down economic solutions that were baked in the West on developing countries can no longer be viewed as adequate.

In his speech— entitled “Democratising Development Economics” — Zoellick pointed out that “modern portfolio theories” of economics have too often failed to deliver on their claims. The hubris behind such claims, he added, “turned to humility in the 2007 sub-prime crisis that led to the global economic crisis.”

To underline his point, Zoellick said, “AHe asccording to its risk model, one investment bank suffered a loss on several consecutive days that should only have occurred once in 14 life-spans of our universe.”

The discrediting of established thinking by the global crisis, said Zoellick, has obvious implications for development economics. In fact, he added, even before the crisis “there was a questioning of prevailing paradigms and a sense that development economics needed rethinking. The crisis has only made that more compelling.”

What has become apparent, Zoellick said, is that development economics needs, “to reach out to better encompass the experiences of successful emerging economies not with ordered templates or with blueprints, not with prescriptions for prescriptees, but inquiringly, cooperatively, openly.”

Modernisation Agenda

The outcome of the Bank’s deliberations was the launch in 2010 of its Modernisation Agenda— a move intended to ensure that the organisation was “strategically focused, financially stronger, and more responsive, transparent, and accountable.”

The Modernisation Agenda has a number of important implications for the Bank. From the specific perspective of the OA movement, it has seen the formulation of an Open Development Agenda, Phase I of which is focussed on providing “openness and transparency in development, from tools and knowledge resources to Bank-wide initiatives.”

The first step was taken in April 2010, when the Bank announced its Open Data Initiative. This saw more than 7,000 development indicators — along with more than 60 other datasets — made freely available on its web site; and the amount of data available continues to grow.

Three months later, in July 2010, the Bank launched its Access to Information Policy— with the aim of transforming the way in which it makes its data available to the public. As part of this initiative, 17,000 historical documents were released from the Bank’s archives.

More recently — on April 10^th this year — the Bank announced its plans to introduce an Open Access Policy. To come into effect the day the new president takes office, the OA policy will mandate that the Bank’s research outputs and knowledge products are deposited in a newly-created institutional repository called the Open Knowledge Repository (OKR), to be made freely accessible on the Internet. The OKR is already live, and contains a great deal of data.

In addition, much of the Bank’s information will be released under the most liberal Creative Commonslicence, allowing anyone to reuse it for their own purposes, even commercially. The Bank is the first major international organisation to take this step.

Larger context

But what is striking about the Bank's Modernisation Agenda from the perspective of the OA movement is that it puts OA in a much broader context than OA advocates are accustomed to think of it — since the Bank is going some way beyond simply making its knowledge more accessible.

Zoellick outlined this broader context last week, at the beginning of the 2012 World Bank-IMF Spring Meeting. Explaining that the Bank is committed to greater openness in a number of ways, he said, “We are continually striving to be more open about what we know (data, tools, and development knowledge), open about what we do (operations, projects, finances and commitments), and open in the way we work (Open Aid Partnership, knowledge platforms).”

As such, the Modernisation Agenda couples issues of transparency, accountability, and freedom of information, with concepts of open content, bottom-up collaborative working, crowdsourcing, and even open government.

Consider, for instance, the six “knowledge platforms” the Bank is creating. This includes the Open Development Technology Alliance, a knowledge platform on ICT that seeks to use external expertise and citizen feedback to improve public service delivery.

In other words, the Bank is treating OA as more than just a tool to enable faster and more effective knowledge transfer and exchange, but a component part of a platform intended to create democratic, bottom-up, multi-pronged solutions to the many challenges confronting not just the developing world,  but mankind at large — e.g. climate change.

The Modernisation Agenda is also an acknowledgement that both knowledge creation and economic power are beginning to shift, and to disperse. As Zoellick put it in 2010, “The flow of knowledge is no longer North to South, West to East, rich to poor.” 

It is no longer a one-way process, but one that moves in both directions. The Bank also views it as a democratisation — for it implies a process in which knowledge and creativity move seamlessly between the developed world and the developing world, and also between organisations and individuals. And it does this in a more decentralised manner.

For OA advocates the take-away point is that while OA may be an important objective in itself, it should now also be viewed as part of a larger whole. As Zoellick put it at Georgetown University, “We need to democratise and demystify development economics, recognising that we do not have a monopoly on the answers. We need to throw open the doors, recognising that others can find and create their own solutions. And this open research revolution is underway. We need to recognise that development knowledge is no longer the sole province of the researcher, the scholar, or the ivory tower.”

Viewed in this context, and in the context of the developing world, calls for public access to research, for open science, and even for citizen science, take on a new meaning, a new purpose, and a new urgency.

Most important legacy

What impact the Bank’s new approach will have on the organisation itself, whether its Modernisation Agenda will prove effective, and whether this more democratic model will enable solutions to the many problems facing humankind to be developed more rapidly remains unknown.

Undoubtedly, changing the culture of a large institution like the World Bank will prove a formidable task. Indeed, the Bank may not entirely understand all the implications of the journey it has embarked on, and many employees of the Bank are doubtless oblivious of the larger picture.

Certainly if it is to live up to its commitment, the Bank will need to reinvent its modus operandi — and in a way that most global institutions would find far too threatening. Indeed, one might venture to suggest that the very notion of decentralisation is oxymoronic in the context of a large international organisation like the World Bank.

In short, only time will tell how successful the Bank will prove in its aim of being more open, more transparent, and more democratic, and the extent to which its OA policy will help it achieve this goal. But all credit to the Bank for trying.

Zoellick clearly believes that, if it succeeds, the Bank’s Modernisation Agenda will turn out to have been an historic moment for the Bank.

Speaking last week, Zoellick said, “Our modernisation agenda is driven by our focus on clients, listening to their priorities, as opposed to the old top-down approach. So our initiatives for open information, open data, and open access to knowledge may turn out to be the most important legacy of the past five years. These steps are key to democratizing development, and these steps lay the foundation for expanding social accountability, fighting corruption, and building better governance.”

In short, Zoellick has bequeathed to his successor not just a new agenda, but a totally new operational model.  Whether the new approach succeeds now doubtless depends on Jim Yong Kim — which is an ironic thought given the Bank’s new commitment to a bottom-up approach. The task for the new president will be to square that circle!

In the meantime, there remains no shortage of critics of the Bank; and no shortage of people keen to offer advice to its new president.

For some insight into the part of the Modernisation Agenda that most directly concerns the OA movement, I publish below an interview with the Bank’s publisher, Carlos Rossel. 

The interview begins ...

RP: As I understand it, the goal of the World Bank is to help reduce poverty and support development. To that end, it provides loans to developing countries for capital programs. But can you clarify for me how the Bank is funded, and the extent to which that funding comes from the public purse?

CR: The terms World Bank, or Bank, refer to two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International Development Association (IDA); IBRD, which works with middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries, finances its activities primarily by issuing AAA-rated bonds to institutional and retail investors in global capital markets.

IDA, which focuses primarily on the world’s poorest countries by providing credits and grants, is funded largely by contributions from the governments of its higher income member countries.

The Guide to the World Bank, available for free download on the Open Knowledge Repository, provides an accessible and straightforward overview of the Bank Group's history, organization, mission, and work.

RP: What role does the Bank’s publishing programme play in fulfilling its mission?

CR: The Office of the Publisherworks with programs across the institution to capture, edit, produce, and disseminate the Bank’s publications as broadly as possible through free channels that include the Open Knowledge Repository, Google Books, Scribd, Issuu, and Facebook, as print publications, via the subscription-based World Bank eLibrary, and as eBooks via the Kindle, Nook, and Apple devices, and through various content aggregators.

RP: The recent announcement that the Bank is introducing an OA policy is the latest stage in what the Bank calls its Open Development Agenda. Presumably, this was the result of a top-down decision originating from the President of the World Bank Group Robert Zoellick. But can you say why the Bank took the decision to become more open?

CR: As World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said in the press release announcing the Open Access policy “Knowledge is power. Making our knowledge widely and readily available will empower others to come up with solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Our new Open Access policy is the natural evolution for a World Bank that is opening up more and more.”

Response to criticism?

RP: The Bank has been criticised for its information policy in the past. Is its new commitment to openness partly a response to that criticism?

CR: It may have played a part, but my view is that advances in online and mobile communications have created opportunities for making the Bank more open and accessible, for disseminating and sharing our knowledge more broadly, and for communicating directly with our stakeholders, and the Bank is simply seizing those opportunities.

RP: The Bank’s previous open initiatives were the Open Data Initiative and the Access to Information Policy. Some would view the Open Data and Open Access initiatives as attempts to create a research environment in which solutions are developed more quickly. By contrast, the Access to Information Policy seems more focussed on freedom of information (FoI) and transparency issues. Does the Bank believe that creating a more open research environment has much in common with FoI and transparency? If so, how would you characterise their common goals and philosophy?

CR: This question is outside my area of expertise so I am not really qualified to respond.

RP: As we noted, the Bank’s objective is to aid developing countries. To what extent do you see greater openness, particularly OA to research, as a development issue, and why?

CR: The Bank is committed to sharing our data, knowledge and analysis with others in the search for development solutions. By making Bank research and knowledge products published by the Bank available libre OA, third parties are free to use, reuse, and build upon the Bank’s work in ways that can lead to innovative solutions to local development problems.

RP: The Bank’s OA policy is complicated. Doubtless this is because the Bank is both a knowledge producer and a publisher. Can you say what percentage of its knowledge output the Bank publishes itself, and what percentage is published by external publishers?

CR: Yes, but only anecdotally as we do not have accurate statistics. The Bank publishes a large majority of its knowledge products, both formally and as grey literature. Bank research that is published by third parties, for example research articles published in non-Bank journals, is first published by the Bank as working papers. These working papers are available freely and, with the new policy, are published under the CC BY licence.

Three broad categories

RP: I assume the Bank also publishes third-party content. If so, what percentage of its publishing output is third party content?

CR: The Bank’s publications, research papers, and other knowledge products often include contributions from authors that are not Bank staff. For example, many of our books are edited volumes with chapters authored or co-authored by individuals who are not Bank staff. We do not have exact numbers of how much third party content is published by the Bank.

RP: Can you give me a (rough) percentage breakdown of the Bank’s output in terms of the different types of knowledge it produces — books, data, economic reports, journal articles etc.? And can you put unit numbers on these different outputs?

CR: The Bank classifies its core knowledge into three broad categories: knowledge for external clients, knowledge as a public good, and knowledge for internal use. Knowledge for external clients is usually for a specific client country, although often it will have application in other countries, and includes analytical work, technical assistance and training. Knowledge as a public good is meant for a global audience, for example the World Development Reportand other publications.

RP: Would it be accurate to say that only a small percentage of the Bank’s knowledge output is peer-reviewed? How much is peer-reviewed?

CR: No, that would not be accurate. All Bank research is peer reviewed. Other knowledge products that are not research per se are subject to varying degrees of review, which may include stakeholder consultations, internal and external review, review by senior management, and review by the Board of Executive Directors. Some books are published in agile, fast-to-market, more informal series that have less stringent review.

Impact on revenues

RP: Since the Bank is a publisher, I assume its OA and Open Data initiatives will have an impact on its revenues. Can you say how much the Bank was earning from its publishing operations prior to the introduction of the Open Data Initiative, how much this has fallen as a consequence of that initiative, and how much the Bank expects it to fall in total once the full impact of its OA policy has been felt?

CR: Revenues have fallen significantly and they will continue to fall. However, we are committed to OA publishing. When the decisions on Open Data and Open Access were made the focus was not on lost revenues but on the cost of not opening our data or adopting an OA publishing model, for our clients and for development.

To the extent that we continue to disseminate through commercial channels it is to take advantage of the added dissemination via those channels and to make the content available to customers where and how they want to access it. So, for example, for some customers the most convenient way to access our content may be to purchase it as an eBook from Amazon and we should facilitate that acquisition.

RP: In deciding to adopt greater openness how did the Bank weigh the inevitable loss of revenue it will experience against the benefits that this openness is expected to provide? In other words, how did it balance the benefits of becoming more open against the need for its publishing operations to remain financially viable (assuming they are)?

CR: As noted above, we focused on the cost of not being open rather than the loss of revenues,

RP: Does the Bank expect to replace its lost revenue with new revenue-generating initiatives, or will it need to make savings. If the latter, how will it make those savings?

CR: Yes, all of the above, and then some. The fact is that free and open is not free. Some of our budget support will come from charges to our internal author clients (internal Gold OA if you will). Savings are realized through reduced warehousing, fulfilment, and shipping costs, and through a more agile, fast-to-market e-first workflow we are implementing.

Value-added products

RP: I note that the Bank is retaining a subscription model for its eLibrary. Is that because it could not afford the loss of revenue that abandoning it would entail, or because it views the eLibrary as a value-added product? If the latter, what added value does the eLibrary provide that the OKR will not?

CR: The eLibrary is a value-added product which is very reasonably priced, and for which we offer free or deeply discounted subscriptions to institutions in developing countries.

In the context of our program’s budget, the revenues are not insignificant, but that is not the only consideration. I believe that we need to remain engaged with that segment of the publishing industry, as that is where much of the innovation in digital publishing takes place.

It is also important so that we retain an entrepreneurial edge and our business acumen and so that we continue to provide the Bank an agile, efficient, adaptable, and cost effective publishing program.

A new and enhanced version of eLibrary will be launched later this year that will offer mobile access, allowing even more flexibility for sharing, using, and re-using the Bank’s knowledge. The new eLibrary will be XML based and will allow users to access books and reports at a more granular level — such as by chapter, table, or figure.

Among other features, users will be able to build custom ebooks from eLibrary content that can be used as course packs for classroom use, create alerts, bookmark content, and enjoy other value-added functionality.

Mandate

RP: The heart of the Bank’s OA policy is a Green OA mandate. I believe the Bank’s OA policy also applies to grantees. What sort of funding (and how much) does it provide to whom and for what? And in way will the OA policy impact on those who receive grants from the Bank?

CR: The Bank does not provide research grants. We included that provision in the policy so that it is covered if there is some ad hoc funding of outside research.

RP: Unlike the NIH and Wellcome mandates, the Bank’s OA policy does not specify an embargo period (other than to say “ideally no more than 18 months”, which is the embargo period for its own two journals). Is this because the Bank, as a publisher itself, understands the anxieties that publishers have about embargos, or for some other reason?

CR: Although I appreciate the perspective of commercial publishers, the major consideration for now is to not complicate our researchers’ ability to publish in external journals, which we believe is a vital channel for our research.

However, I do expect that embargo periods will go down over time and we will revisit this issue in the future.

RP: So far as I am aware, the Bank never uses the word “mandate” in its descriptions of, and documentation about, its OA policy. Is there a particular reason for that, or did it simply use the same wording as the NIH?

CR: I do not recall that this was deliberate. We use the word “requires” which in this context I take to be synonymous with “mandate.”

RP: The Bank is not the first institution to introduce a mandate. What did it learn from the experience of those who have introduced mandates before it, and how did that inform the way the Bank put its own OA policy together?

CR: In 2010 we conducted a strategic review of the publishing program with the objective of implementing a cutting-edge publishing program that fully embraces free and open publishing. We engaged Key Perspectives, a UK consultancy to the publishing industry, to undertake the review.

Their report recommended adoption of an OA policy, the use of CC licensing, and the development of a repository. In addition, in drafting the OA policy we did look at the policies of other institutions, all of which informed our policy.

Creative Commons

RP: One aspect of the Bank’s OA policy that is pioneering is its adoption of Creative Commons licensing. How did the bank arrive at the decision to take this step, what were the issues it considered in doing so, and what are the risks as you see them?

CR: It was one of the recommendations coming out of the strategic review. The Bank had already opened its data and made it available without restrictions and had implemented the Access to Information policy. Adopting CC licensing was a logical next step in the Open Agenda.

RP: One thing we have learned about OA mandates over the past few years is that compliance is often pretty low. I believe the Wellcome Trust recently indicated that it is still only achieving a 55% compliance rate for its mandate some six years after it was introduced. Do you anticipate compliance being a problem for the Bank? What systems is it putting in place to maximise compliance?

CR: A high compliance rate with the policy is one of our top priorities and we are making every effort to support Bank researchers to comply with the policy.

As I noted, the Bank publishes the majority of Bank-authored research and knowledge products (as books, reports, and working papers). We are confident that we will achieve high compliance with the policy.

RP: The Bank’s policy nevertheless allows authors to ask for a waiver (or “exception” as it calls it). The Harvard OA policy allows this too. As I understand it, Harvard has found that some publishers routinely insist that authors ask for a waiver if they want to publish with them. Do you envisage this being a problem for the Bank?

CR: We are proactively working with publishers to conclude institutional agreements to comply with the policy.

In the case of journal articles, concluding such agreements will make the process smoother, and we expect that our authors and the journal publishers will appreciate a streamlined licensing process. We have started discussions about these agreements with a number of publishers and will reach out to others over the next few months.

RP: How often does the Bank anticipate that it will grant an exception, and will it grant it automatically?

CR: I do not anticipate that there will be a large number of requests for exceptions, but time will tell. The cases will be reviewed and decided individually on the merits of the request.

RP: The Bank’s Administrative Manual states that all rights in any work produced by Bank employees belong to the Bank. It also states that the rights in external research funded by the Bank belong to the Bank. It later says that it “strongly encourages” authors to retain the Bank’s ownership. I am not clear how an employee could give away copyright in a work in which he or she had no rights. Can you clarify this?

CR: Strictly speaking, an employee cannot give away copyright in a Bank work unless the Bank releases the copyright to the employee. In exceptional cases the Bank may choose to release the copyright to the author if circumstances make that practical.

Our objective is to provide the authors with the knowledge and tools that allow them to publish externally in a manner that complies with Bank policy. 

Gold OA

RP: I could find only an oblique reference to Gold OA in the Bank’s documentation about its OA policy. Many research institutions are creating Gold OA funds, and encouraging researchers to pay to publish. Will the Bank be doing either or both of these things?

CR: No, the Bank will not encourage researchers to pay to publish and we are not creating Gold OA funds.

RP: Will the Bank be offering a pay-to-publish option itself? If so, how will this operate, and what APC will it charge?

CR: We will not offer a pay-to-publish option.

RP: What in your view are the pros and cons of Gold OA? Do you think it offers a viable model for the future? Do you expect it to become the primary business model for OA publishing?

CR: Academic/STM publishing is crucial to scholarly communication and publishers play a vital role and provide an invaluable service. This service has a cost and that cost has to be borne. Gold OA has a role and I expect funding agencies will support Gold OA.

RP: What advice would you give to other international organisations like the World Bank who might be considering embracing OA?

CR: Well, I don’t offer advice to my peers at other international organizations. If asked, I suggest that they get ahead of the issue and drive the move to OA within their organizations.

RP: Can we expect to see the IMF follow suit?

CR: I wouldn’t venture a guess at whether or not the IMF will adopt OA.

RP: What advice would you give to those scholarly publishers who are still resisting the OA tide?

CR: We are an institutional, mission-driven publisher, working within the context of our organization and facing a unique set of opportunities and constraints. Scholarly publishers operate in their own contexts and face their own opportunities and constraints. I would not venture to provide advice since I am not familiar with their unique circumstances.

Next Steps

RP: What is the next step in the Bank’s Open Development Agenda, and what do you see as the end point?

CR: The Bank will continue to add more data to the Open data portal, release new research and knowledge products in the OKR, and additional documents under its Access to Information Policy.

In addition new products and applications are being launched including, for example, the Mapping for Results that maps 30,000+ project locations for 1,600 active Bank projects or the Climate Change Knowledge Portala hub for climate information. 

We will keep tracking aid flows to present a more complete picture of what money is being committed to development and where it is being spent.

We will partner with others to encourage greater openness in development projects, aid, and in government. The Open Aid Partnership, for example, is seeking to increase transparency through open data on aid flows and public service delivery. Malawi piloted this approach and mapped aid from 27 donors.

Building on its role as a global connector, the Bank is investing in six new Knowledge Platforms to collaborate on solving thorny development problems. For example, the Open Development Technology Alliance, a knowledge platform on ICT, seeks to use external expertise and citizen feedback to improve public service delivery.

Finally, the Bank is helping signatories of the Open Government Partnership achieve greater standards of transparency and participation through the mapping of public spending.

It is also helping governments implement Access to Information legislation. We have supported the Government of Kenya in launching the first Open Data Initiative in Africa, which made several large data sets, including the national census, available to the public.

RP: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

More information on the World Bank’s Open Access policy is available here.

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