On 8-Dec-08, at 3:54 AM, Tracy Gardner wrote on LIS-E-RESOURCES:
I thought subscribers to this list would be interested in
this announcement
from the PLS and the Research Assessment Exercise.
This absurd deal is as foolish in 2008 as it was in 2006, when it was
first announced:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/63-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/131-guid.html
Now that 6 of the 7 RCUK Research Councils have mandated Open Access
Self-Archiving and the RAE has gone metric, let us hope that this
nonsense is well on its way to becoming mercifully moot.
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/outputs/access/default.htm
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/175-guid.html
Stevan Harnad
******
With the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results
imminent, the
Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) has described its role
in helping
publishers simplify access to articles submitted for
assessment by UK higher
education institutions (HEIs).
Facilitating the provision of online access to over
150,000 journal
articles without authentication barriers or licence
conditions was the
challenge presented to the PLS during the planning stages
of this years RAE.
After discussions with the PLS, the recommended solution
to the
time-consuming, largely paper-based processes of the last
assessment carried
out in 2001 was for participating institutions to submit
the Digital Object
Identifier (DOIs) of selected journal articles to the RAE
team. The RAE
team would then create a database of DOIs and, using the
CrossRef database,
link through to the journal article on the publisher
site. A specially
created Athens account would take care of authentication
and the whole
process should save assessors and the RAE team a great
deal of time and
effort. It then fell to PLS, which represents
publishers' collective
licensing interests, to broker a deal to allow
fee-waivers and direct
access to publisher content,and to co-ordinate the
project on behalf of
around 2000 publishers'.
Alicia Wise, CEO PLS, says "It was a very interesting
challenge and one that
I knew the PLS could provide valuable input to. The sheer
choreography of
getting 100s of individual publishers to understand and
agree to a single,
fee-waived licence, for access to content for the
purposes of the RAE was
significant. It has been the most complex licence I have
ever worked on and
the most demanding from the point of view of
co-ordinating the sheer number
of participating publishers, trade associations and
industry bodies that
provided input to the project. I am very impressed with
the way the
publishing community responded to this challenge and
proud that the PLS was
instrumental in helping marry technological solutions and
licensing
considerations to help with this important exercise."
Ed Hughes, RAE Manager, said: 'We would like to thank
publishers for not
only agreeing to a licence solution for the RAE, but also
for allowing our
expert review panels direct access to their content. We
wanted to make it
easier for submitting HEIs to provide material to the
panel electronically
and we needed to simplify access for our 1100 panel
members. These
arrangements have allowed us to accomplish the RAE in a
more efficient way,
and has eased the burden on both submitting institutions
and panels. I'm
delighted that publishers and HEFCE were able to
collaborate effectively on
this vital project.'
About the Research Assessment Exercise
The Research Assessment Exercise is conducted jointly by
the Higher
Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the
Scottish Funding Council
(SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales
(HEFCW), and the
Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland
(DEL).
The primary purpose of the RAE 2008 is to produce quality
profiles for each
submission of research activity made by institution. The
four higher
education funding bodies intend to use the quality
profiles to determine
their grant for research to the institution which they
fund with effect from
2009-10 - over £1.5 billion per year will be allocated
for research using
the results of the 2008 RAE. Any higher education
institution in the UK
that is eligible to receive research funding from one of
these bodies is
eligible to participate in the exercise.
About the PLS
The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) is a non-profit
organisation
representing UK publishers on matters relating to
collective copyright and
collective licensing. PLS works with thousands of
publishers operating with
the trade associations for publishers' rights. For more
information visit
www.pls.org.uk
Contact Details:
For more information please contact:
Tracy Gardner
Tel: 07884 438007
Email: tracy -- tgm.ox14.com
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Received on Mon Dec 08 2008 - 09:35:10 GMT