FEATURE Open access
Rocky road to open access
The latest open access mandates are set to unlock research, but in some cases implementation is proving costly and complex
As open access policies come into force, UK higher education institutions are racing to meet the mandates. Rebecca Pool reports
I
t’s no secret that technology has thrown scholarly publishing into a state of flux. The digitisation of content, easy-to-use software, and the ever-growing opportunity to spread your words across the Internet has prompted academics and publishers to reassess how research is published.
For many in the UK, open access is the
answer, as indicated by recent requirements from the nation’s two most significant providers of public funding, Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Higher Education Funding Councils for England (HEFCE).
In short, each has recently introduced policies for UK research organisations to make published outputs openly accessible. However, the road to open access is anything but short. ‘We always said this would be a journey and not an overnight switch,’ highlights Mark Thorley, chair of the RCUK Research Outputs Network and head of Science Information for the Natural Environment Research Council. ‘We’ve seen issues over the cost of implementation, administrative processes and also policy compliance reporting,’ he adds. ‘But we’re also seeing an increasing volume of research available as open access, so the policy is making a difference.’ For Thorley, open access is a no-brainer. With a twitter account called ‘My life is Open Access and Open Data’, he points out how in today’s networked world, anyone can publish, literally anything. And, in his view, this makes instant access to peer-reviewed research more important than ever before.
‘Those in the research process have the responsibility to ensure that quality, peer- reviewed research is widely available to all who need it,’ he says. ‘Otherwise the void will be
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filled by make-believe and half-truths.’ So, for his part, Thorley is spearheading
RCUK’s open access policy, which was introduced in 2013, a year before HEFCE announced its policy on the same. Each organisation’s policy aims to make research arising from its funds widely and freely accessible, although in practice, RCUK policy takes a firmer stance.
The Research Councils’ mandates aim to achieve immediate, unrestricted, online access to work funded by the UK research councils. Meanwhile, HEFCE’s approach requires that certain research outputs submitted to any research assessment exercise after 2014 be made as widely accessible as possible [see ‘RCUK and HEFCE Policy on Open Access’]. Exceptions exist, where, for example, publisher requirements mean research outputs cannot be deposited within policy obligations.
But firm or not, the two policies are deemed to be complementary and two years on, a lot has happened. For starters, the research councils are emerging from the first independent policy review, carried out by former vice chancellor of the University of Leicester, Bob Burgess.
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