Universities face higher costs during transition to open access model for research findings, conference told

The transition to an open access model for published research findings risks being hugely wasteful of UK public funds unless the government changes its approach, a conference has heard.

Adrian Bailey, chairman of the House of Commons’ Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Labour MP for West Bromwich West, who supports open access, said, “The process now underway disproportionately benefits publishers.”

He said that universities and research bodies, whose budgets were already stretched, would face higher costs meeting the change in publishers’ business models.

Bailey was speaking in London at a seminar on implementing open access policy, held on Tuesday …