Tuesday, 17 September 2013

RCUK Open Access Policy - guidance for St Andrews authors

The new RCUK Policy on Open Access was implemented on 1st April 2013.  We have updated a short two page document which describes the key points in the new policy and gives useful guidance information for St Andrews authors on how to comply.  The document: RCUK OA policy briefing is available along with further details from the Library web pages. The full RCUK Policy on Open Access is available from Research Councils UK.

We hope that you will find this guidance useful. It will continue to be updated as new information and processes are developed.

When contacting the Library to check how to comply with the RCUK OA policy, please provide the following details:

    Your name, School and email address
    Journal and publisher
    Article title, manuscript ID or DOI if available
    RCUK funder name and external Grant ID acknowledged in the paper

Help and guidance is always available by contacting open-access-support@st-andrews.ac.uk

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

Report from BIS inquiry on open access

The UK Government's Business, Innovation and Skills Committee published their report today following an inquiry into open access.

Parliament announced the report, emphasising the role of repositories:
"The Government’s commitment to increasing access to published research findings, and its desire to achieve full open access, are welcome, says the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in a Report published today.  However, whilst Gold open access is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully open access world is a mistake, says the Report.

The Report calls on the Government and RCUK to reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access."

SPARC Europe welcomed the report with this response, stating that "we expect the research community now broadly to support the recommendations contained in this new report."

Among other things the report recommends that RCUK realigns its policy to match that of HEFCE’s post-2014 REF proposals, which mandates immediate deposit in an institutional repository.