[GOAL] Re: UK Research Councils plan to strengthen OA policy

[Steve Hitchcock]

Sometimes things get discussed, and other times they just get done. That seems to be the case for the RCUK's proposed OA policy changes, and the requirement for CC-BY. 

While immediate CC-BY seems reasonable for OA publishing, my understanding is that while RCUK continues to push the dual approach that also involves OA in repositories, that CC-BY must apply here too, after a maximum embargo period of 6 months. In other words, there is a switch of rights after this period.

In introducing the CC-BY requirement the policy says: "The Research Councils acknowledge that some publications may need to amend their copyright conditions if they are to meet this definition of Open Access." 

That is certainly true for all non-OA journals. Green open access strikes a balance, with non-OA journals allowing OA in repositories without conceding on rights, and although this pragmatic approach does not appeal to BOAI purists, it has encouraged growth of the number of green OA journals, and therefore in the potential number of OA papers that could be self-archived in repositories. The new policy will impact on this strategy, and on repositories, which will have to assert CC-BY on relevant papers.

It's not clear what effect these policy changes will have on the number of green OA journals listed by Sherpa-Romeo, on the application of embargoes. Journals can choose to become RCUK-compliant, to remain green but not compliant, or to reject green and compliance altogether. The middle option hardly seems tenable. Calculations will have to be made, particularly around the value of rights, especially around the 6-month embargo point, and the extent to which other funders will follow RCUK's lead on CC-BY.

Elsewhere, will institutional OA policies have to fall in line with RCUK? What effect will this have on the rate of new policy adoptions?

The proposed RCUK policy changes appear to present a steeper challenge for those who promote green open access and green OA publishers than for true OA journals, or perhaps that is the real point here.

Steve Hitchcock
WAIS Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379

On 13 Mar 2012, at 11:33, Kiley, Robert wrote:

> Peter
>  
> The RCUK policy on this is very clear – OA means CC-BY.
>  
> “The existing policy will be clarified by specifically stating that Open Access includes unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools. Also, that it
> allows unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution – as defined by the Creative Commons CC-BY licence.
>  
> Robert
>  
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust
> Sent: 13 March 2012 11:11
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: UK Research Councils plan to strengthen OA policy
>  
>  
> 
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Richard Poynder <ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>  
> The UK's Research Councils have proposed a revised policy on Open Access which further clarifies RCUK's definition of OA and strengthens some of the criteria that must be satisfied. In particular, the policy commits to libre Open Access as the agreed RCUK definition, ...
> 
> Please can you clarify what is the RCUK's definition of "OA" and "libre".  I hope that libre means "consistent with BOAI/BBB" or else it is operationally useless for anything other than human eyeballs. (See Wiley's definition of "fully open access" - I review this inhttp://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/03/04/wiley%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cfully-open-access%E2%80%9D-chemistry-open-my-review-if-this-is-%E2%80%9Cgold-oa%E2%80%9D-i-don%E2%80%99t-want-it/ )  For example do the members of this list really believe that this is "libre"?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
> 
> 
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