Open access policy

This policy provides guidance on the requirements and practices of the University to provide equitable, worldwide access to the research and scholarly output of staff and students.

Abstract

We welcome The Lancet's stance on open access (April 6, p 1166).1The Lancet EditorsThe Lancet journals welcome a new open access policy.Lancet. 2013; 381: 1166-1167Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar We note that you wish to review how you can make all publicly funded research as accessible and usable as possible. However, we also note that even with the announced changes, The Lancet will still have less free access than other key general medical journals. For example, there is free access to all research articles in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) after 6 months from 1998, in the New England Journal of Medicine after 6 months from 1990, and in The British Medical Journal immediately from 1840 onwards.The Lancet's plans would only apply to work funded by particular funders, and there is no mention of plans to improve access to already published studies. Currently institutional and personal subscriptions to The Lancet only provide access to issues from 1998 onwards. In our academic institution, the quote from Elsevier for our library to purchase access to pre-1998 issues is a large 5-figure sum equivalent to about 9% of our total serials budget, and several times what we paid for back issues of JAMA. How can The Lancet justify this huge cost? Many of the articles published before 1998 were also publicly funded.We declare that we have no conflicts of interest. We welcome The Lancet's stance on open access (April 6, p 1166).1The Lancet EditorsThe Lancet journals welcome a new open access policy.Lancet. 2013; 381: 1166-1167Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar We note that you wish to review how you can make all publicly funded research as accessible and usable as possible. However, we also note that even with the announced changes, The Lancet will still have less free access than other key general medical journals. For example, there is free access to all research articles in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) after 6 months from 1998, in the New England Journal of Medicine after 6 months from 1990, and in The British Medical Journal immediately from 1840 onwards. The Lancet's plans would only apply to work funded by particular funders, and there is no mention of plans to improve access to already published studies. Currently institutional and personal subscriptions to The Lancet only provide access to issues from 1998 onwards. In our academic institution, the quote from Elsevier for our library to purchase access to pre-1998 issues is a large 5-figure sum equivalent to about 9% of our total serials budget, and several times what we paid for back issues of JAMA. How can The Lancet justify this huge cost? Many of the articles published before 1998 were also publicly funded. We declare that we have no conflicts of interest. The Lancet journals welcome a new open access policyThe often fractious debate about how best to make publicly funded research more widely accessible and useable has intensified over recent years and is gradually reaching a practicable resolution. For example, the UK's Finch report,1 published last June by an independent group of academics, research funders, and publishers, clearly stated that the UK should embrace the transition to open access while recognising that it is important “to ensure that they [researchers] have effective and high-quality channels through which they can publish and disseminate their findings”. Full-Text PDF Open AccessOpen access policy – Authors' replyJudith Glynn and Sara Thomas raise important questions about our current policy to offer open access publications as outlined in our recent Comment.1 Our announcement is only a first step in a fast evolving movement towards making publicly funded research as accessible as possible, and we are continuously reviewing our approach. However, many of our research papers—all those reporting global health research—are already routinely made free to access immediately at publication. In addition, we are launching the first open access journal within the Lancet family, The Lancet Global Health, on June 25, this year. Full-Text PDF