Open, free access to academic research? This will be a seismic shift – The Guardian

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales will be helping ensure that the publicly funded portal promotes collaboration and engagement. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

My department spends about £5bn each year funding academic research – and it is because we believe in the fundamental importance of this research that we have protected the science budget for the whole of this parliament.

We fund this research because it furthers human knowledge and drives intellectual, social and economic progress. In line with our commitment to open information, tomorrow I will be announcing at the Publishers Association annual meeting that we will make publicly funded research accessible free of charge to readers. Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the forefront of open research.

The challenge is how we get there without ruining the value added by academic publishers. The controversy about the status and reliability of reviews on TripAdvisor is a reminder of how precious genuine, objective peer review is. We still need to pay for such functions, which is why one attractive model – known as gold – has the funders of research covering the costs. Another approach, known as green, includes a closed period before wider release during which journals can earn revenues.

While opening up the fruits of research is a seismic shift for academic publishing, it is not a leap into the unknown. There are many good examples in medicine. For instance, the Wellcome Trust requires all the research it funds to be made freely available online. A report this year from the U.S. Committee for Economic Development has concluded that the US National Institute of Health’s policy of open access has accelerated the transition from basic research to commercialisation, generated more follow-on research and reduced duplicate or dead-end lines of inquiry – so increasing the US government’s return on its investment in research. And the researcher Philip Davis has found that, when publishers randomly make articles open access on journal websites, readership increases by up to 250%.

Moving from an era in which taxpayer-funded academic articles are stuck behind paywalls for much of their life to one in which they are available free of charge will not be easy. There are clear trade-offs. If those funding research pay open-access journals in advance, where will this leave individual researchers who can’t cover the cost? If we improve the world’s access to British research, what might we get in response? Does a preference for open access mean different incentives for different disciplines?

These questions explain why I have asked Dame Janet Finch, one of the UK’s most experienced and respected academics, to produce a report setting out the steps needed to fulfil our radical ambition. She is working with all interested parties and her report will appear before the summer. It is expected to chart a course towards a world where academic articles are freely and openly available at or around the time of publication.

Twenty years ago it would have been impossible to imagine an encyclopedia written by millions, openly and freely collaborating via the internet. Today, Wikipedia is an important part of our lives and its co-founder, Jimmy Wales, will be advising us on the common standards that will have to be agreed and adopted for open access to be a success, and also helping to make sure that the new government-funded portal for accessing research really promotes collaboration and engagement. We want to harness new technologies to enable people to comment and rate published papers in ways that were not possible before, and we want to develop new online channels that enable researchers from around the world to collaborate and share data and build new research partnerships. With Jimmy Wales’s help, I’m confident that we can achieve all this and much more.

Our commitment to open up access to academic research will help strengthen this information revolution, and put more data and power in the hands of people. It’s proof that there are still dividing lines in British politics – and that we are firmly on the side of openness.

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Agency stops seismic tests; worries about dolphins

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With sick and dead dolphins turning up along Louisiana’s coast, federal regulators are curbing an oil and natural gas exploration company from using seismic equipment that sends out underwater pulses known to disturb marine mammals.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has told Global Geophysical Services Inc. to not conduct deep-penetration seismic surveys until May, when the bottlenose dolphin calving season ends. The agency says the surveys are done with air-guns that the emit sounds that could disrupt mother and calf bonding and mask “important acoustic cues.”

The company said it laid off about 30 workers because of the restriction, which it called unnecessary.

But environmental groups suing BOEM over the use of underwater seismic equipment say restrictions should be extended to surveyors across the Gulf of Mexico.

The new limit on exploration highlights the friction over oil drilling in the Gulf since the April 20, 2010 blowout of a BP PLC well that resulted in the death of 11 workers and the nation’s largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history.

After the 2010 spill, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity sued to get curbs placed on underwater seismic surveys. The environmental groups argued they harm marine mammals and that the federal government violated animal protection laws after it declared in 2004 that the surveys were safe.

The government is in settlement talks with those environmental groups, according to court documents.

“Imagine dynamite going off in your neighborhood for days, months on end,” said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst at the NRDC. “That’s the situation these animals are facing.”

Jasny said the restriction placed on Global Geophysical was a good sign, but far from enough.

In its ruling, the federal agency said it was concerned that seismic surveys could affect marine mammals, and even cause them to lose their hearing.

Amy Scholik, a fisheries biologist with NOAA, said it was unknown what kind of effects air-guns have on bottlenose dolphins, but she said there was concern about possible effects on dolphin calves because they are vulnerable to stresses. She added that whales in Alaska have been shown to change migration routes because of seismic surveys.

George Ioup, a physics professor at the University of New Orleans studying the effects of air-guns on marine mammals, said the verdict was out on the effects of air-guns on mammals. He said BOEM seemed to be ruling “on the side of caution.”

“Proving there is an effect, I don’t know if that has been done,” he said. “I don’t think the answer is overwhelmingly simple.”

The air-guns are towed at low speeds behind a survey ship and emit high-intensity, low-frequency sound waves to find geological layers. Seismic surveying is essential to drillers because they tell them where to drill and not drill.

The government also relies on the seismic data to know where it’s safe to drill and to determine how much it should charge for leasing offshore blocks to oil and gas companies.

Marc Lawrence, Global Geophysical’s vice president in the Gulf region, said the seismic surveys do not pose a danger to marine mammals.

“We see no hazard to them whatsoever,” Lawrence said. As proof, he said dolphins routinely ride along with ships when they are conducting surveys.

He said the restriction covers an area that ranges out to about 20 miles off the Louisiana coast. He called BOEM’s restriction unprecedented. His company is searching for overlooked reservoirs in areas along the central Louisiana coast: Grand Isle, Timbalier island, the West Delta and south Pelto.

This is the same area where government scientists say they have found sick and dead dolphins.

From February 2010, NOAA has reported 180 dolphin strandings in the three parishes that surround Barataria Bay — Jefferson, Plaquemines and Lafourche — or about 18 percent of the 1,000 estimated dolphins in the bay.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it had found 32 dolphins in the bay underweight, anemic and showing signs of liver and lung disease. Nearly half had low levels of stress hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function.

Lori Schwacke, a NOAA scientist, said the dolphins’ hormone problems could not definitely be tied to the oil spill but were “consistent with oil exposure.”

Over the same period of time, NOAA says 714 dolphins and whales have been found stranded from the Florida Panhandle to the Texas state line, with 95 percent of those mammals found dead. Normally, the region sees 74 reported dolphin deaths a year.

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