Research Funders
An increasing number of research funders are adopting policies mandating that grant holders must make research outputs resulting from funded research available on an open access (OA) basis. This requirement is a condition of grant and it is crucial that Queen’s authors know how to comply with the mandate as it may impact on their choice of publisher.
OA policies for research funders are available at the Sherpa Juliet service.
Recent Changes in UK Open Access Policy
The Finch Report, published in June 2012, recommended that the UK move towards OA publishing for research outputs and that the long-term aim would be for all UK Government funded research outputs to be available on an OA basis. In July 2012, the UK government announced acceptance of the recommendations made in the Finch Report.
Research Councils UK (RCUK)
In response to the Finch Report and the UK government’s position, RCUK issued a new updated policy in July 2012 on OA to research publications generated from RCUK funded research.
The RCUK policy on open access aims to achieve immediate, unrestricted, on-line access to peer-reviewed and published scholarly research papers, free of any access charge. The policy stipulates that from 1 April 2013 any research papers being submitted for publication arising from all RCUK-funded research are to be made OA. The policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles or conference papers, which acknowledge Research Council funding, that are submitted for publication from 1 April 2013. The main points of the RCUK policy are:
- Publications must be available on OA within 6 to 24 months of the publication date
- There are 2 routes to OA, namely Green OA or Gold OA
Green OA is facilitated when the author deposits the author final version of the paper in an OA repository in compliance with any publisher copyright restrictions.
Gold OA is the pay-to-publish system whereby the author pays an article processing charge (APC) and a Creative Commons CC-BY licence must be attached to the article to allow others to modify, distribute and build upon the work provided the original author is acknowledged.
From 1 April 2013 RCUK will issue research institutions with a block grant which will be used to help defray the cost of article processing charges (APCs) so that research publications will be made OA via the Gold pay-to-publish route, the preferred RCUK route. From this date it will not be possible for academic authors to include the cost of APCs in individual RCUK grant applications.
The RCUK have produced a FAQ document about their policy.
Other Research Funders
Other major research funders also have OA policies:
The European Commission and The European Research Council
In 2008, the EC and ERC instigated an OA pilot for research funded under the FP7 (Seventh Framework Programme for Research Programme). This gave authors the option of the Green or the Gold routes. It is expected that this approach will be extended to Horizon 2020, which is the European Commission’s new programme for research and innovation to run from 2014-2020.
The Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust operates an OA policy. It states that any research outputs arising out of Wellcome Trust funded research must be made electronically available in PubMed Central or European PubMed Central as soon as they are published or at the latest within 6 months of publication. The Wellcome Trust provides funding for OA charges.
The National Institutes of Health
Effective from April 2008, the US National Institutes of Health mandated that any peer-reviewed articles arising in whole or in part from NIH funding must be deposited in PubMed Central.
Science Foundation Ireland, Health Research Board and the Irish Research Councils
The OA requirements of these agencies have now been conflated into a national policy position on Green OA. This policy, effective from January 2013, states, 'Peer reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research should be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an on-going basis.'
Charities
Charities which provide research funding also have policies on OA.
