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The UK is set to hit its target of making all products of academic research freely available by 2020 but its position as a world-leader in the field is under threat, says a new report authored by University of Sussex Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell.

The country is on track to meet UK Government targets, with the number of publications available via open access rising from 18% in 2012 to 54% in 2016, states the new report commissioned by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy.

As chair of the Open Access Coordination Group (OACG) for Universities UK (UUK), Professor Tickell has made 13 recommendations to research funders, university leaders and policy developers on funding, administrative burden and transparency to ensure the UK maintains its world-leading position, ahead of Germany and the Netherlands.

The advice includes calls for a UK-wide policy ambition covering the next five years, with a focus on achieving open access as the default publication option, delivering financial sustainability for research performing organisations, and value for money on public investment in research.

Professor Tickell said: “In 2016, I reported that there had been considerable progress in the transition towards open access in the UK since the Finch Report. In the last two years, progress has accelerated. The UK is now well on track to deliver almost all research outputs via open access by 2020, and is world leading in OA publishing rates.”

The independent advice, Open access to research publications – 2018, calls for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding for open access publication to continue beyond its scheduled end next year, to assist universities in making a smoother transition from high-value and long-running deals with publishers.

The report warns the market is not as elastic as it could be pointing to the rise in average article processing charges of 16% between 2013 and 2016 whilst full-open access journal payments rose by 33%. The report also raises concern about the difficulties of new operators achieving market penetration.

It advocates steps should be taken to reduce the power of a small number of prestigious journals currently dominating the industry by adopting policies that give more weighting to the research’s value in terms of insight, impact, reliability and re-usability rather than just journal reputation.

Professor Tickell also warns that the financial implications of the current arrangement appear to be unsustainable in the medium to long term and questions whether the UK can afford its current preference for Gold access, where an author pays a fee for a paper to be available freely to anyone in the world.

He added: “There appears not to have been a significant change in the market concentration of the major publishers, no significant widespread ‘flip’ of publisher business models towards full open access from subscription and, as of yet, no significant transformative effect arising from new entrants to the publishing market.”

To read the report visit the Gov.uk website.

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