RSC news

This one was also extracted and gets to the RSC's response to the Finch Report.

-James

“UK RSC pledges £1 million aid for UK chemical science researchers to publish OA papers - 12 Sep 2012

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has recently pledged £1 million to aid UK chemical science researchers to publish open access (OA) papers in RSC journals. This gesture has now been followed by the UK government, with an announcement on that it will invest £10 million to support the transition to OA.

But the RSC questions the effectiveness of the government's initial funding, saying that on its own, this may be too thinly spread to have a significant positive effect.

Last week, Science and Universities Minister David Willetts pledged 'extra' money to aid 30 research-intensive universities as they make the shift to OA publishing. The government's £10 million will be a one-off transfer of funding from the existing science budget (of £3 billion annually) and will be in addition to block grants for article processing charges that will be made available by the research councils from April 2013. The amount and distribution of these block grants is reportedly still unclear.

The Finch Report estimated that in order to achieve a significant and sustainable increase in access to research content, an additional £50-60 million a year in expenditure will be required.

To assist researchers during a period of uncertain funding for OA, the RSC announced its 'Gold for Gold' initiative. This enables researchers who do not yet have the funding to pay OA fees to make their paper available via Open Science, the RSC's Gold Open Access model. All UK institutions subscribing to RSC Gold - the RSC's premium collection of journals, databases and magazines - have received credit for future Open Science publication fees equal to their subscriptions paid.

UK institutions are said to have responded positively to Gold for Gold, and the first journal article for publication through this initiative came from a research group based at the University of Hull.

Click here

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2012/BIS-open-access-investment-response.asp

to read the original press release."

(I’ve been busy giving library tours.  Classes start tomorrow.)

Louise