ANALYSIS AND NEWS
both within the UK, and for institutions and funders in European countries that are less far along in their transition to open access. Similar briefs have been produced describing the journey towards OA in several other European countries including Portugal and Denmark.
The brief on OA policy effectiveness is designed to assist both with evaluation of existing policies and development of new ones. It describes the various elements that an OA policy needs to cover and – through analysis of 120 mandatory OA policies operating in several countries – it has been possible to identify five policy elements that are most effective in bringing about significant improvements in the proportion of research outputs that are published in OA. These are: l Research articles must be deposited in the institutional repository;
l The above action can’t be waived, whatever the conditions of any embargo;
l If the policy states that an author should retain certain rights over their published work, this cannot be waived;
l Items deposited must be made OA – if necessary, after any embargo period ends; and
l Deposit of articles is linked with research assessment and performance evaluation processes. With insights like these from peer institutions, it should be much simpler for universities both to develop a policy that is effective and to identify where an existing one needs improvement. And thirdly, we have produced a briefing paper that examines the similarities and differences between policies produced by UK HEIs, highlighting areas where there is consensus, and where differences or lack of clarity exist.
There are major differences, for example, over issues such as the required date of deposit of research outputs, and about licensing conditions, which can create headaches for researchers as well as complicating matters for research support staff responsible for reporting to funders and for monitoring compliance. Confusion often exists over the finer detail of issues
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such as waivers, research evaluation, rights, embargoes and funding, often because detail on these issues is lacking. That may be for a variety of understandable reasons but making policies more comprehensive, explicit and closely aligned with those of funders and peer institutions will enable
‘Institutions and funders in the UK have been in the vanguard of Europe’s OA movement’
researchers and administrative staff to comply with policy more easily and bring about faster, more significant improvements in performance on open access. The full suite of advocacy resources includes templates on OA policy- making and case studies on OA policy implementation in several lead nations. There are also briefings on related subjects such as research data, article processing charges (APCs), copyright and measuring research impact.
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DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 Research Information 9
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