Research

"Universities still do not know how many open-access papers their academics are publishing, Research Fortnight has learned. In April 2013, Research Councils UK shared £17 million between 84 institutions to pay for academic papers published in the following year to be made open access. RCUK’s policy said that the money was to be used to ensure that at least 45 per cent of research papers would be published open access in this period. In a freedom of information request, Research Fortnight asked all 84 institutions whether they had reached this milestone. The average rate across the 27 universities that responded was 49 per cent, just above RCUK’s target. However, at least 12 universities have not hit the target—and the real number may well be higher, given that 57 universities did not respond. The institutions that have not hit the target include Royal Holloway, University of London (30 per cent), the University of Bristol (30 per cent), the University of St Andrews (36 per cent) and Newcastle University (39 per cent). Queen’s University Belfast achieved only 11 per cent compliance. Many universities cautioned that their data were incomplete; others said they simply did not have the data. On average, the reported compliance rate appears to be an improvement on the past. In 2006-07, when the Wellcome Trust first imposed an open-access policy, the compliance rate of its researchers was 25 to 30 per cent, according to Robert Kiley, the trust’s head of digital services. And the real proportion of open-access papers may be higher, as some papers published in this first year of the policy may be made open access later, after an embargo has ended. Eighty-four per cent of the articles that were reported by universities as open access were published using the gold route. However, this figure is likely to be inaccurate: it is based primarily on declarations made by the academic to the university, which is much more likely to happen if the academic chooses gold ..."