BioMed Central today welcomed the latest moves by the UK research councils to enhance access to publicly funded research in the UK.
The new policy statements from Research Councils UK (RCUK), and from the individual research councils, contribute additional momentum to the movement towards making all publicly funded research freely accessible. In particular, three research councils (the MRC, BBSRC and ESRC) have announced that they will mandate open access archiving for all the research that they fund. The statement from the Medical Research Council (MRC) is especially important for biomedical researchers, as the MRC is largest public funder of biomedical research in the UK....
The MRC statement strongly encourages grantees "to publish in journals that allow them (or their institutions) to retain ownership of the copyright," and reconfirms the MRC’s policy that funding for open access journal article-processing charges may be included in grant requests....
An important aspect of the RCUK’s overall statement, is the recognition that: "[article processing charges for open access journals] could be part of an institution’s indirect costs under the full economic costing regime." This is highly significant, since it clarifies to institutions that the cost of article processing is seen as a research infrastructure cost, and can be funded as such. This should be of great help in smoothing the transition from the traditional model in which research publishing is paid for through library subscriptions, towards an open access model, under which the cost of publication is paid for as part of the cost of doing research.
For UK-based authors, the new policies from the MRC and BBSRC, in particular, provide additional reasons to publish in BioMed Central’s 160+ open access journals. Not only do authors publishing in BioMed Central’s journals retain the copyright, but the articles are automatically deposited with PubMed Central and made openly accessible immediately on publication, satisfying the research council requirements and reducing effort on the part of the author....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/30/2006 09:05:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
