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assume that all APCs will be at the level currently charged by some of the larger open access journals such as PLoSOne. The arrangements should allow universities to build up from both Research Council and Funding Council grants, as well as other sources, funds to meet those costs. Any rules relating to the use of such funds should be as flexible and light touch as possible, and should seek to minimise transaction costs. Funders should also offer as much flexibility as possible to universities on the payment of APCs for publications arising from collaborations across institutional and geographical boundaries, where more than one funder is involved, and where no external source of funding has been provided.
9.5. Through the Funders Forum, the Government, the Research Councils and the Higher Education Funding Councils should also work together to discuss with other funders in the public, charitable and business sectors how best to promote and fund increases in access through publication in open access and hybrid journals.
9.6. In order to increase access in the short to medium term, we also recommend that the Government and research funders should work together with universities and with publishers to extend and rationalise current licence arrangements for higher education and the NHS. We believe it should be possible at modest cost to provide access free at the point of use to the great majority of journals for the benefit of all staff and students in both sectors. Government should also work together with all the interested parties, including university finance officers, to find ways to reduce the burden of VAT payments for e-journals, and thus to reduce the disincentive to eliminate the wasteful costs of producing journals in both print and digital formats.
9.7. Government should also facilitate discussions between representative bodies in the public, business and voluntary sectors on the one hand, and publishers on the other, to find ways of developing licence agreements to provide access to relevant journals and other content across key parts of those sectors which do not currently enjoy such access; and ways of funding such agreements.
9.8. A key issue for funders, requiring careful consideration, will be the precise configuration of policies relating to the role of repositories. We see repositories fulfilling a subsidiary, but important role, for the short to medium term alongside open access journals and extensions to licensing. But it is important that they do so in a sustainable way, in the interests of the research communications system as a whole. That will require further investment in developing the UK-wide infrastructure of repositories. JISC may have a significant role to play here in its work to enhance integration and interoperability.
9.9. Policies relating to embargo periods and other restrictions on the versions of articles that are published in subscription-based journals and which are made accessible via repositories—and on the uses that can be made of them—will need especially careful consideration. We understand the aspiration for rapid and unrestricted access, and we recognise that embargo periods and other restrictions serve to limit access. Hence we understand the case for keeping such restrictions to
