SCONUL response to the Wellcome Trust consultation on OA policy

"Background

The Wellcome Trust is currently conducting a review of its open access policy and SCONUL was invited to respond on behalf of its members.

Current Wellcome policy:

‘’The overarching aim of our OA policy is to ensure that knowledge and discoveries which arise from our funding are shared and used in manner that maximises the benefit to health. This objective remains our north star.

“Beyond this however, we’ve defined three additional objectives. Specifically, the OA policy should:

 Support a transition to a fully OA world, where no research is behind a paywall

 Be as clear, unambiguous an straightforward as possible to comply with

 Ensure that the costs of delivering this policy are fair and proportionate.”1

The full statement of Wellcome’s current policy can be found here:

https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/open-access-policy.

SCONUL’S response

A.

What do you think has been the impact of Wellcome’s existing OA policy on realising open access?

1. The collective impact on OA policies, approaches and strategies adopted in the UK has been to make the UK one of the countries leading the transition to open access, with 37% of UK outputs made freely available to the world immediately on publication, either through Green or Gold OA2. This has taken us further towards a fully open access world than the average globally and must be regarded as a success...."