Open Access News

CURL, SCONUL and CILIP would like to express their support for the RCUK interim position statement on access to research outputs. We believe that the statement is a reasonable and balanced approach to current issues and has the potential to make significant improvements to research communication. We would urge RCUK to adopt the statement as its policy as soon as possible. We believe that the principles outlined in paragraph 3 of the position statement are an excellent summary of the key priorities for the major stakeholders in the research community....We welcome the requirement (in paragraph 14) to deposit work funded by Research Councils in open-access repositories....We note RCUK’s caution with regards to the viability of the open-access publication charge model of journal publishing (paragraphs 25-27). However, we welcome confirmation that the Research Councils are willing to fund such charges. Such a move is likely to allow more extensive testing of the model – something which is certainly required....[P]aragraph [14.b] has two potential ‘loopholes’ that will mean that some who oppose it will be able to prevent authors or institutions from complying with the requirement. The first problem relates to the phrase “subject to copyright or licensing arrangements”. This allows publishers simply to change their copyright transfer agreements in order to prevent deposition in e-print repositories. Although the majority of large publishers currently allow deposition, we have reason to believe that some are reviewing their position on this. The second problem relates to the phrase that “deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements.” Since no timescale is specified for deposit, it will be possible for publishers to introduce embargoes on articles. Oxford University Press has recently introduced a general 12 month embargo and is currently considering a 24 month embargo for some of its titles. They can do this and still say that they are fully compliant with the RCUK policy. We have reliable information that other major publishers are also considering the introduction of lengthy embargoes. If embargoes were widely introduced then there would be little change in the public accessibility of research outputs despite the introduction of the RCUK policy....We believe that a reasonable timescale for deposit would be ‘as soon as possible but no later than three months after publication’ (bearing in mind that an article is often completed 12 months or more before it is actually published).