Gold Open Access project | Association for Learning Technology

"The Government announced on 16 July 2012 that it had accepted the recommendations of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Dame Janet Finch. The Finch report recommended a clear policy direction in the UK towards support for 'Gold' Open Access (OA) publishing, where publishers receive their revenues from authors rather than readers, and so research articles become freely accessible to everyone immediately upon publication. This transition will present challenges to all stakeholders across the research lifecycle, from institutions and researchers to scholarly societies, funders and publishers. As one of its responses to Finch, the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) has commissioned ALT to create resources to provide information, advice and guidance for stakeholders — and in particular for scholarly societies — on moving to and managing Gold OA. ALT has recent experience of making the Gold OA transition successfully with its Research in Learning Technology journal. The project will support the adoption of Gold OA by helping learned societies and other stakeholders make an accurate and honest appraisal of the challenges and by providing support to meet these challenges. To do this it will produce a resource comprising web content and supporting documents consisting of mainly UK-focused information and guidance for a range of stakeholders about Gold OA scholarly publishing; an impact assessment framework and sustainability plan for the resource so that it could be economically maintained in an up-to-date state for a reasonably long period after its initial launch. To help shape these resources, the project will first carry out an analysis of stakeholders in Gold OA and review existing resources to determine the gap between what exists and what is needed..."