SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) strongly supports the recent commitment by Research Councils UK (RCUK) to ensure access to publicly funded research. The RCUK statement, which says that “ideas and knowledge derived from publicly funded research must be made widely available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as possible,” requires deposit of research articles in open access repositories. Three individual Research Councils have announced policies mandating this to date.
“RCUK, and the UK by extension, have taken a tremendous leap forward that will benefit researchers, scholars, teachers, patients, and citizens,” said SPARC Director Heather Joseph. “We have seen overwhelming evidence that making the deposit of research papers in open access repositories a condition of awarded grants ensures the widest compliance and greatest benefits for research. We encourage all individual Research Councils to institute policies for open access.”
SPARC submitted a letter in support of RCUK’s new policy during the comment period. A copy of this letter is available on the Web [here].
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/15/2006 09:20:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
