The last session of the day – Q and A with panel:

Q: How quickly is change coming, and how can we keep pace with it – specifically in relation to ‘metrics’ such as the REF wants to apply?

A: Metrics are by nature backwards looking – so bound to have some issues with this. Need to engage people like WoS/SCOPUS to look at what they can offer.

By its nature measuring something changes it – we have to constantly review (and change) our measures

Q: How long will libraries continue to subscribe where material is also available via OA?

A: Balancing act – everyone aware of fragility of system – need to keep peer-review, but how it is paid for is a question – while ‘publication’ is the model, need to maintain it.

Q: Libraries can’t afford ‘author pays’ model

A: Not just a library issue – institution need to understand issues and have policy towards OA and how they fund it

Not the biggest issue – the ‘elephant in the room’ is the increase we expect to see from quality research coming out of China and India – unlikely current system will be able to cope with this.

Q: How to physicists use arXiv – do they search? Browse?

A: Get email alerts of new papers each day (or view on website).

Anecdote – physicist saying never used physical copies, but saw them as an ‘archive’ copy (unlike the online version, which they read, but didn’t necessarily see as ‘permanent’)

Comment: OUP has developed number of preservation approaches – dark archive, relationships with Portico, LOCKSS etc. This comes at high cost, and has been led by demands from libraries to publishers – could even see a reversal of this where publishers make demands on libraries for preservation etc. (which is perhaps the model we have with paper!)

Some more discussion which I totally failed to capture – sorry 🙁