20 July 2004
JISC Welcomes House of Commons Select Committee Report
JISC has welcomed the Report of the Science and Technology Committee Report and indicated its support for its recommendations.
These recommendations will enable research funded by the UK taxpayer to be made available to a wider readership than the present scholarly publication system allows.
JISC also welcomed the support given by the Committee to JISC's current initiatives to improve access to scientific literature for UK further and higher education students and staff, and to support UK authors in publishing in open access journals.
In particular the Science and Technology Committee's support for institutional repositories will build upon the work of the JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) Programme. The institutions participating in the FAIR Programme have established repositories for the work of their academic staff, and the Committee's support for these developments will encourage all UK academic authors to improve access to the results of publicly-funded research through this route.
The Committee's encouragement to the publishing community to participate in further trials of open access publishing, such as the initiatives created and funded by JISC, will also benefit researchers. Examples of this area of activity include JISC's agreement with BioMed Central, recently renewed, as well as the JISC open access programme. The open access publishing model provides barrier-free access to peer-reviewed journals, leading to higher use of research results and encouraging further research.
JISC further welcomes the Committee's placing of such developments in an international context, as members of JISC staff are already working closely with their counterparts in other countries on behalf of UK further and higher education. If implemented, the Committee's recommendations will encourage the use of UK research results by communities across the world.
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