Current and future research fundamentally relies on access to the findings and ideas that come out of publicly-funded research. We fully support the concept of universal access so that everyone can benefit from this knowledge.
Research Councils UK position statement
We remain strongly committed to the principles outlined in the Research Councils UK position statement on access to research outputs issued in June 2005. This says that knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use; must be subject to rigorous quality assurance through peer review; must be preserved and remain accessible for future generations and this must be done in a cost effective way.
Understanding the issues
The issues are complex, and range from ascertaining who publishes research information and who pays for it to be published, deciding where it should be published (the internet has completely changed the way we disseminate information) to determining how we assess the validity and quality of published findings. In addition, decisions have to be made on where and how this information will be archived and who pays for its long-term storage?
Following a consultation, Research Councils UK, in collaboration with the Research Information Network and the Department of Trade and Industry, commissioned an analysis of the availability and quality of data on scholarly journals publishing.
The independent study commissioned by Research Councils UK was completed in late 2008. The findings from the study are now being taken forward by the Cross-Council Research Outputs Group and will be used to inform future policy on open access. EPSRC Council agreed at its December meeting to mandate open access publication, but that academics should be able to choose whether they use the so-called green option (ie, self-archiving in an on-line repository) or to use the gold option (ie, pay-to-publish in an open access journal). Further details will be published in spring 2009.
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