Re: JISC Invitation to Tender: Open Access Publishing Initiative Round 2

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

David, Thank you for your kind words about the JISC open access publishing
initiative. The successful bids under the previous round of funding were
announced in a press release dated 5 March 2004 which can be read at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=news_openaccess_0304 . To save
people's time in looking up the web-site, the four successful bids were
from the Public Library of Science (PLoS, for PLoS Biology), Institute of
Physics Publishing (New Journal of Physics), the Journal of Experimental
Botany at Lancaster University, and the International Union of
Crystallography.  Publishers were invited to submit bids in response to an
"invitation to tender", and the successful bids were those which matched
the funding criteria most closely. Each publisher was asked to submit a
business plan and the bids were marked by members of the JISC Journals
Working Group. The money is being used to fund open access
publication-charges for UK academic authors, but as you rightly point out
we do not wish to exclude journals from outside the UK with a high
proportion of UK authors.

The JISC is particularly concerned to support learned society publishers
willing to transition to open access. While we are confident that learned
societies can have a good future under open access, we understand the
legitimate concern about a switch in the business model and we wish to
cushion the transition. The arguments we used within JISC to secure
funding from the appropriate JISC committee were the well-rehearsed points
about the benefits from open access publishing. I can supply a document to
anybody who is unaware of these points. This initiative was praised in the
Report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and the
JISC is looking at ways to increase the amount of funding available. In
the meanwhile we hope that more publishers will submit good bids we are
able to support.

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Frederick J. Friend
JISC Consultant
OSI Open Access Advocate
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk
Mail address: The Chimes, Cryers Hill Road,
High Wycombe, England HP15 6JS
Telephone +44 1494 563168 or  +44 7747 627738 (mobile)
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