Times Higher Education - Funding councils publish REF open-access proposals

"The announcement has been made in the councils' preliminary consultation document on open access, published today. The document restates the councils' commitment to requiring all outputs submitted to post-2014 REFs to be open access 'where this is reasonably achievable'. However, it accepts that 'it is not appropriate to express any preference [for gold or green] in the context of research assessment'. The position is in contrast to that of the government and Research Councils UK, who have both expressed a strong preference for journal-provided gold open access over repository-provided green open access. Under the proposals from all four of the UK funding councils, even papers published via the gold route must also be available in institutions' own repositories: 'This reflects our view of the significant role of institutional repositories in increasing sustainable and convenient public access to research.' The final peer-reviewed text of all papers will have to be deposited immediately upon publication even if they are not made open access until an embargo period has passed. The document does not express a view on how long those embargoes should be. It is also open minded about whether Creative Commons CC-BY licences should be required. However, it says papers must be presented in a form 'allowing the reader to search for and re-use content (including by download and for text-mining) both manually and using automated tools, provided such re-use is subject to proper attribution'. 'While we expect that sufficient clarity and reassurance on embargoes and licences will be achieved through [RCUK's ongoing] discussions, we welcome responses which address these issues,' it says ..."