[GOAL] UK Research Councils plan to strengthen OA policy
Richard Poynder
Yesterday details of a proposed new RCUK OA policy were posted on the Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) web site. The EOS post reads:
The UK's Research Councils have proposed a revised policy on Open Access which further clarifies RCUK's definition of OA and strengthens some of the criteria that must be satisfied. In particular, the policy commits to libre Open Access as the agreed RCUK definition, and permits an embargo of not longer than 6 months except for research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.
Some other areas where the existing policy, implemented in 2006, is strengthened are:
- the defining of specific conditions for OA journals to be recognised by the Research Councils as 'Open Access Policy Compliant'
- the stipulation that the version of an article to be deposited in OA repositories is the final author version that is 'accepted for publication' (i.e. with all corrections and changes made as a result of peer review)
- the Research Councils will no longer accept embargo periods imposed by publishers, but instead stipulate an embargo period of no more than 6 months except in the case of humanities and social sciences
- a requirement for a statement from authors on how the 'underlying materials' (i.e. data, samples or models) for an article may be accessed (N.B. the materials need not necessarily be Open Access themselves)
EOS warmly welcomes this revised, strengthened policy from RCUK, especially the clarification on permitted embargo periods and the progressive and forward-looking definition of Open Access. This is a leading-edge policy that will set new standards for others to emulate.
The draft policy can be accessed from the EOS web site here: http://bit.ly/xp158P
Peter Murray-Rust
The UK's Research Councils have proposed a revised policy on Open Access which further clarifies RCUK's definition of OA and strengthens some of the criteria that must be satisfied. In particular, the policy commits to libre Open Access as the agreed RCUK definition, ...
Please can you clarify what is the RCUK's definition of "OA" and "libre". I hope that libre means "consistent with BOAI/BBB" or else it is operationally useless for anything other than human eyeballs. (See Wiley's definition of "fully open access" - I review this in http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/03/04/wiley%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cfully-open-access%E2%80%9D-chemistry-open-my-review-if-this-is-%E2%80%9Cgold-oa%E2%80%9D-i-don%E2%80%99t-want-it/ ) For example do the members of this list really believe that this is "libre"?
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
Kiley, Robert
Peter
The RCUK policy on this is very clear – OA means CC-BY.
“The existing policy will be clarified by specifically stating that Open Access includes unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools. Also, that it
allows unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution – as defined by the Creative Commons CC-BY licence.
Robert
Alma Swan
“The Research Councils define Open Access to mean unrestricted, on-line access to peer reviewed and published scholarly research papers. Specifically a user must be able to do the following free of any publisher-imposed access charge:
- Read published papers in an electronic format.
- Search for and re-use the content of published papers both manually and using automated tools (such as those for text and data mining) provided that any such reuse is subject to proper attribution.
What would be different?
Alma Swan
On 13/03/2012 11:10, "Peter Murray-Rust" <pm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
Peter Murray-Rust
Steve Hitchcock
While immediate CC-BY seems reasonable for OA publishing, my understanding is that while RCUK continues to push the dual approach that also involves OA in repositories, that CC-BY must apply here too, after a maximum embargo period of 6 months. In other words, there is a switch of rights after this period.
In introducing the CC-BY requirement the policy says: "The Research Councils acknowledge that some publications may need to amend their copyright conditions if they are to meet this definition of Open Access."
That is certainly true for all non-OA journals. Green open access strikes a balance, with non-OA journals allowing OA in repositories without conceding on rights, and although this pragmatic approach does not appeal to BOAI purists, it has encouraged growth of the number of green OA journals, and therefore in the potential number of OA papers that could be self-archived in repositories. The new policy will impact on this strategy, and on repositories, which will have to assert CC-BY on relevant papers.
It's not clear what effect these policy changes will have on the number of green OA journals listed by Sherpa-Romeo, on the application of embargoes. Journals can choose to become RCUK-compliant, to remain green but not compliant, or to reject green and compliance altogether. The middle option hardly seems tenable. Calculations will have to be made, particularly around the value of rights, especially around the 6-month embargo point, and the extent to which other funders will follow RCUK's lead on CC-BY.
Elsewhere, will institutional OA policies have to fall in line with RCUK? What effect will this have on the rate of new policy adoptions?
The proposed RCUK policy changes appear to present a steeper challenge for those who promote green open access and green OA publishers than for true OA journals, or perhaps that is the real point here.
Steve Hitchcock
WAIS Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379
On 13 Mar 2012, at 11:33, Kiley, Robert wrote:
> Peter
>
> The RCUK policy on this is very clear – OA means CC-BY.
>
> “The existing policy will be clarified by specifically stating that Open Access includes unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools. Also, that it
> allows unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution – as defined by the Creative Commons CC-BY licence.
>
> Robert
>
> From: goal-b...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-b...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust
> Sent: 13 March 2012 11:11
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: UK Research Councils plan to strengthen OA policy
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Richard Poynder <ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> The UK's Research Councils have proposed a revised policy on Open Access which further clarifies RCUK's definition of OA and strengthens some of the criteria that must be satisfied. In particular, the policy commits to libre Open Access as the agreed RCUK definition, ...
>
> Please can you clarify what is the RCUK's definition of "OA" and "libre". I hope that libre means "consistent with BOAI/BBB" or else it is operationally useless for anything other than human eyeballs. (See Wiley's definition of "fully open access" - I review this inhttp://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/03/04/wiley%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cfully-open-access%E2%80%9D-chemistry-open-my-review-if-this-is-%E2%80%9Cgold-oa%E2%80%9D-i-don%E2%80%99t-want-it/ ) For example do the members of this list really believe that this is "libre"?
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
>
> This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl
>
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> GOAL mailing list
> GO...@eprints.org
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