Improving Access

This plenary session at UKSG presented the new portfolio of research projects focused on gaps in access, the dynamics of improving access to research papers and transitions to electronic-only publication. This work is funded by the Research Information Network (RIN), JISC, Publishing Research Consortium (PRC),Wellcome Trust and Research Libraries UK (RLUK). Ian Rowlands’ presentation focused on access gaps and barriers for scholarly content, and was based on a survey of 20,000 users of journal articles and conference papers in universities and colleges; medical schools and health providers; industry and commerce; and research institutes. Mark Ware considered how such gaps in access might best be addressed, based on a study which compared five possible routes: open access journals (gold OA); open access repositories (green OA); delayed access; extensions to licensing; and transactional solutions (such as pay-per-view). Laura Cox presented a study which looked specifically at the obstacles to exclusively online journal provision from the perspectives of libraries, academia and journal publishing, and gave recommendations for how they might be overcome.The full reports on all three studies will be available from the RIN website, but the Editors of Serials have asked the presenters to provide brief summaries of their work for those who were unable to attend the conference.