NEWS FEATURE
Open Access gathers new momentum
There’s been a landmark open access policy change at the UK’s largest public research funder, so what has changed and what impact will it have on information professionals?.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has an annual budget of around £8bn and already requires all of the peer-reviewed research articles that it funds to be made open access. It does so by two possible routes. One is the Gold OA route in which research is made open access and free to all, on publication, via a publisher’s website. This is when the publisher has been paid article processing charges (APCs) by the author. And a Green OA route (when there is no option or funding for the gold version), which requires the “accepted manuscript” version – the pre-publication form of the research – to be made open access via some other repository but often with embargoes of several months after the final version has been published behind a paywall.
No embargo
The existing UKRI policy allows for embargoes for up to six months in STEM and up to 12 months in arts, humanities and social sciences. One of the key changes is that from April 2022, UKRI-funded research published via the Green OA route will have to be made open access in their accepted manuscript form immedi- ately – so no more embargoes. The Gold route has also changed with UKRI imposing restrictions to the kinds of publishers it will pay APCs to, saying it “has decided not to allow its future open access funding to be used for publication charges in hybrid journals unless covered by a transitional agreement agreed with Jisc”.
Liberal licence
Another key change is that UKRI had previously only made its licensing preferences clear without setting
14 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
them in stone, saying it would “like research papers to be made available using the most liberal and enabling licences, ideally CC BY”, but the minimum require- ment is less liberal: “without restriction on non-commercial re-use” or CC BY NC, and it also allows for other “publisher-spe- cific licences”. However, from April 2022 the most liberal CC BY licence will be required, not just preferred, although some exceptions will be made.
Monographs
Another significant change is that from 2024 its OA policy will extend to long- form/monograph publications too. The OA requirements for this research will be different – for example allowing more diverse licensing, so non-derivative and non-commercial clauses can be added – with UKRI saying: “We recognise that the use of open licences is less established for long-form outputs. UKRI also recognises that publishers and university presses have lower sustainability margins and a more significant role in editing and cura- tion for long-form outputs.” There has been some push-back from the publishing industry but generally the view from information professionals is that this is a strong and positive move. However, due to the complexity of the academic publishing landscape there are still questions.
Academic
The end of embargoes and reduction in the control of publishers has been wel- comed, as has the move into monographs, bringing more humanities research into OA. There is also relief that block grants – which support the payment of APCs and give institutions some local flexibil- ity in implementing the OA policy – will continue.
However, while supportive, some are apprehensive about how to implement these changes in their own institutions and rewriting their own OA policies.
There will be more work supporting researchers in making the no-embargo Green OA approach the default com- pliance route.
In a sector that is already risk averse, there is also talk of a potential risk of publishers suing institutions for making manuscripts open under no embargo when authors have signed a contract agreeing to an embargo period. To pre-empt these kinds of problems, some coordina- tion between institutions has been proposed, including pooling a list of the publishers that have opposed and rejected manuscripts with the RRS clause (Rights Retention Strategy, adopted by Plan S, and CoAlition S, of which UKRI is a member).
Health Sue Lacey Bryant, National Lead for NHS Knowledge and Library Ser- vices has noted that the new UKRI policy will certainly impact on the health and care sector. A recent study conducted on behalf of HEE and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) revealed that 17 per cent of the 121,915 papers pub- lished over the five years from 2015 to 2019 with a co-author from the health or social care system report- edly received UKRI funding. She anticipates that the UKRI policy will, in turn, influence the new NIHR research funding policy adding: “We are maintaining a ‘watching brief’.” She writes: “The NHS workforce and the public reasonably expect to be able to access publicly-funded research. Working with stakehold- ers, HEE continues to champion the principle that research outputs funded by the NHS are freely and immediately available to all. We will welcome the implementation of Open Access policies to ensure that public funds are used effectively”.
September 2021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
