<div dir="ltr">Tony Hey: "A Journey to Open Access" Part 6<div style><a href="http://tonyhey.net/2013/04/04/a-journey-to-open-access-part-6/">The Open Access Revolution: The Next Steps...</a></div><div style><br>
</div><div style>Excerpt:</div><div style><br></div><div style>...<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">We now have OA mandates coming from both the Legislative and the Executive branches of the US Government. The White House memorandum covers both research publications and research data and requires the relevant Federal Agencies to deliver a plan within six months from February 2013. It is noteworthy that both the White House memorandum and the bi-partisan FASTR bill require green open access via repositories and say nothing about gold—in contrast to the approach preferred by the Finch Report and by the Research Councils in the UK. For more commentary on both FASTR and the White House memorandum see </span><a href="https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ" target="_blank" style="border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(116,51,153);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">Peter Suber’s blog</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">...</span></div>
<div style><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px"><br></span></div><div style><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">... </span><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">Back in the UK, some re-thinking of Finch and RCUK’s OA policy is taking place. A recent review by the House of Lords criticized RCUK for failures in communication and for lack of clarity about its policy and guidance. Prior to a more complete review of its policy in 2014, RCUK issued a revision of its Open Access policy on 6 March 2013. The major change was that there is now an explicit statement that although RCUK prefers gold, either green or gold is acceptable. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has also launched an inquiry into open access which has yet to report. Finally, on 25 February, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is consulting the research community on </span><i style="border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">‘the role of open-access publishing in the submission of outputs </i><i style="border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">to the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF)’</i><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">. For non-UK readers, the REF is a research review process conducted by HEFCE, the major UK university funding organization, to determine national university and departmental research rankings. Their intent is </span><i style="border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">‘to require that outputs meeting the REF open access requirement (whether published by the gold or green route) shall be accessible through a repository of the submitting institution’</i><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Bitstream Charter',serif;font-size:16px;line-height:24px">....</span></div>
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