Complying with research funders’ Open Access policies : JISC

"[1] Why is this important? From 1 April 2013, Research Councils UK (RCUK) will require papers resulting from research they’ve funded to be published Open Access, preferably in journals that make papers immediately available at no charge to readers (gold Open Access). [2] In a nutshell ...  Costs to authors will be met by RCUK via block grants to universities. Alternatively, papers can be published in traditional subscription journals that allow free access after an embargo period via the author’s institutional repository (green Open Access). [3] How we can help ... Our services can help researchers select journals that satisfy their funders’ requirements. We're also piloting a service to help your organisation manage the payment of publication charges.  [a] The introduction of block grants to pay for publication charges creates a new administrative burden for researchers, universities, funders and publishers. Jisc Collections, which negotiates and manages journal subscriptions on behalf of UK higher education, has entered into an agreement with Open Access Key to develop a single, centralised, online administration platform to manage the processing of article publication charges, saving all those involved time and money. A one year pilot project began in March 2013. Find out more, or express your interest in joining the pilot at a later date.  [b] Check out research funders' policies on Open Access at Sherpa-Juliet, which lists policies for more than a hundred funders in 19 countries.  A complementary service, Sherpa-Romeo, lists publishers’ policies on authors placing research papers on their own websites or in Open Access repositories.  [c] Sherpa-Romeo, in conjunction with RCUK and the Wellcome Trust, is launching a new service, Sherpa FACT on 1 April 2013. It will allow authors to find out directly whether the journal in which they wish to publish complies with their funder’s Open Access policy and, if so, how to proceed. A test version of Sherpa FACT is available here. Institutions will eventually be able to use a computer interface to embed the guidance into their own web pages which can include institution specific advice, such as who to contact about accessing funds to pay publication charges. [4] What does the future hold? Jisc will be producing information for learned societies and journal editors who are considering making their journals Open Access. We’re also exploring the case for shared services to enable repositories to work more efficiently and effectively in supporting Open Access via the green route."