ALPSP and academics fight it out over Research Councils UK IR rules

Academics and society publishers have clashed over a potential mandate by the Research Council UK (RCUK) in support of institutional repositories. Senior academics, including web inventor Sir Tim-Berners Lee, have written an open letter to RCUK denying claims made by society publishers that the mandate will kill of journal publishing.

In June the RCUK announced a proposal for all RCUK funded papers to be deposited in institutional repositories for free access. Papers would have be to be deposited as soon as they are released for publication. RCUK is one of the UK's primary research funding bodies.

If the mandate is passed, all research grants awarded by the RCUK after October 1, 2005 would demand that the paper is deposited in an institutional repository.

The open letter to the RCUK was signed by Sir Berners-Lee, open access advocate Professor Stevan Harnad and academics from the University of Cambridge, Loughborough, Sheffield and Strathyclyde.

"We don't think that there is evidence that self archiving does not damage journals," said Sally Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), "We wrote to the RCUK to draw attention to our concerns that self archiving will damage society journals."

ALPSPs members are concerned that if the RCUK passes its mandate subscriptions to journals published by small publishers and societies will dry up. " Institutional repositories of non-organised papers will draw away subscriptions because the articles are easier to find due to Google Scholar and because budgets are dropping," she said. Morris doesn't blame librarians, "If you know you can get most of the content freely, then you will drop that journal from your subscription lists."

ALPSPs is concerned that the RCUK mandate will damage journals and the societies that publish them. "Subscription money goes back into research via bursaries."

Sir Tim and his fellow academics refute the claims made by ALPSPs, stating that ALPSPs claims that the "mandate would lead to the financial failure of scholarly journals" is "unsubstantiated" and that "all objective evidence is precisely contrary to this dire prediction".

Morris said she has a meeting with RCUK to discuss the mandate, where she will ask for a delay in implementation so that publishers and societies can " evaluate what potential there is for damage." The academics have called on RCUK to "implement its immediate self archiving mandate without delay".

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