Discussing Openness of Research

with Professor Luke Georghiou

Transcript

I’m Luke Georghiou, Vice President for Research and Innovation.

What does ‘open knowledge’ mean to you, in the context of Higher Education?

For me, ‘open knowledge’ means that knowledge which has been publicly funded should be freely available to all users with only minimum transaction costs, and that that knowledge should be sufficiently documented so that users can make full and complete use of it.

What is your response to the Finch report (2012), and how have things changed in the UK since its publication?

When the report first came out, I think research universities were quite concerned by its very strong support for the Gold route — over the Green route — to open access, which meant that public funds would have to be dedicated to paying article processing charges. As it has turned out, the financial pinch has been slower in coming than we expected, but nonetheless that is happening. In the meantime, publishers have been making even larger profits through double-dipping, and subscriptions have not reduced as a result of open access. So the Finch report was a good step on the road, but I can’t imagine that it could be the final solution to where we’re trying to go.

How significant do you think the HEFCE policy for open access (from April 2016) will be for the sector?

It will be very significant, because the compliance for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) brings in a much wider population of academics than those who have been funded by research councils. In particular, it will be much more inclusive for social science and humanities academics. The other big difference is that it is much more neutral between the Gold and Green routes, and I suspect as a result that it will provide a major boost for the Green route to open access.

What are the benefits for researchers to publishing openly?

My personal experience as a researcher is that having your outputs open access is highly beneficial. We clearly want our research to be read by as many people as possible, and in the end when people read it, they use those results and they are also likely to cite your papers, so you get reputational benefit, and you get the wider satisfaction that your work is penetrating much more than it would otherwise.

What’s your view on sharing research data openly?

There is a very good reason for making the data underpinning publications available. It allows us to check the validity of results, to check the reproducibility, and indeed to take that work further on. I do think we need to draw the line though on open data, because the cost implications could be horrendous if every bit of data which trailed through a research team had to be made available in the proper documented way that an open data approach would demand.

How do you seen openness helping Manchester achieve its strategic objectives?

From a research perspective, the University’s strategy wants to position us as one of the world’s leading universities, and in the end if you unpick what that definition means, it’s not so much about the numerical indicators but about the reputation of your research, so again the more our research is able to move around the world and reach people, the more likely we are to benefit from its reputation.

What is your view on new publishers who provide only Gold open access publications, compared to the traditional subscription journals?

So long as these publishers maintain the same standard at peer review, it can only be welcomed that the world of publishing is opened up. However, I do think we have a problem because we’ve constructed our academic reward system around a hierarchy of journals, and it will take some years for academics to wean themselves away from that. I’d also want to caution against the ‘predatory journals’ — I think that’s the right term — who constantly bombard us with spam mails seeking publication for a fee. Not only are those a danger in terms of financial fraud, but also they open a channel for uncertified knowledge to get into the system.

What would you say is the difference between new journals like PLoS (Public Library of Science) and ‘predatory publishers’?

I think a journal like PLoS would be very open in who was engaged in producing it, in the peer review processes that go on — they don’t have to be conventional peer review processes; there is some experimentation going on there — and of course that there is a whole track record from submission to publication.