Open Access at Oxford » Top 10 things you need to know about Oxford’s response to the RCUK OA Policy

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-03-08

Summary:

"1. We support the overall objective to sharply increase on-line public access to peer reviewed and published scholarly research papers, that is free to those who do not have access via personal or institutional subscriptions to academic journals. However, we have serious concerns about certain aspects of the RCUK approach. 2. If an Oxford researcher chooses, for sound academic reasons, to publish in a journal that is not ‘RCUK compliant’ the University will defend that decision. Our academics, researchers, staff and students must be free to publish in the journal of their choice. 3. The University favours Green OA (self-archiving) as the most cost-effective, sustainable and credible means of achieving greater public access to research outputs, and will further develop and maintain the Oxford Research Archive (ORA) as single point of access to Oxford outputs, to conserve full text for future generations and to meet OA-related funder requirements and demonstrate institutional compliance.  ORA contains full text copies of papers by Oxford authors, will provide public access to these (license conditions permitting) and displays records for Oxford publications with links to publishers’ copies. 4. The University’s best estimates to date indicate that the Block Grant to fund Open Access via the ‘Gold route’ (publisher makes article OA immediately) would meet the costs of only one-third to one-half of articles by Oxford authors. 5. Whilst RCUK has stated a preference for ‘Gold OA’ this is not mandatory. 6. Most journals will allow the final draft post-refereeing, or in many cases the publisher’s version/PDF, to be made available in a recognised repository, such as ORA, for no charge, within the RCUK-preferred embargo periods by discipline. 7. A consultative paper to be considered by the University Research Committee on 4 March proposes that the University will support Gold OA, where the author is usually required to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC), only in cases where a fee must be paid for the article to be published (and in most cases the journal does not also charge a subscription) or where funding made available for this purpose by the research funder is required to meet the funder’s grant terms and conditions (noting that in many cases self-archiving for no fee is permitted and will provide free access for all readers). 8. There is no implication for the REF 2014.  Subsequent REFs may have Open Access requirements. 9. Considerable uncertainty remains around specific elements to do with RCUK’s requirements and expectations – RCUK’s revised guidance is expected to be published by the end of February 2013. 10. You can email open-access-enquiries@bodleian.ox.ac.uk with any questions.  This site remains a primary vehicle for communicating about OA at Oxford.  Or follow @oaoxford on Twitter."

Link:

http://openaccess.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/top-10/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.comment oa.mandates oa.green oa.uk oa.costs oa.sustainability oa.funders oa.fees oa.embargoes oa.rcuk oa.funds oa.compliance oa.ref oa.repositories oa.policies oa.journals oa.economics_of oa.u.oxford

Date tagged:

03/08/2013, 12:22

Date published:

03/08/2013, 07:22