Is RCUK's Open-Access Cash A 'Reckless' Road To Ruin?

Senior scientists critical of allocation rules and assumptions behind £100m grant for 'gold' fees, writes Paul Jump

Research Councils UK's announcement of how it will allocate more than £100 million in block grants for open-access publishing has met with a lukewarm reception. The grants, which will be available from next April, are intended to help universities to meet the cost of making articles freely available under the "gold" open-access model. They will be distributed in proportion to how much institutions have charged the research councils in direct labour costs over the past three years.

RCUK was criticised in September for distributing £10 million in new government funding for open access on the basis of institutions' gross research income from public sources. A spokeswoman for RCUK said that indexing funding levels to direct labour costs would better reflect the "effort" that goes into research, and would be fairer to disciplines in which research is less expensive. Andrew Wathey, vice-chancellor of Northumbria University and the research lead for the University Alliance of business-focused universities, agreed...