SPARC Europe Welcomes UK Research Councils on Open Access

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

*Apologies for cross-posting*

For immediate release
July 11th, 2006
For more information, contact:
David Prosser
SPARC Europe
david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

SPARC EUROPE WELCOMES THE UK RESEARCH COUNCILS' STRONG LEAD IN 
PROVIDING OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH OUTPUTS

Councils announce publicly funded research must be made widely 
accessible

Oxford, UK - SPARC Europe welcomes the publication of the 
position statement on access to research outputs by Research 
Councils UK (RCUK) and the related policies adopted by individual 
Research Councils (see http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/). 
Following a year of extensive consultation on their draft policy, 
RCUK has reiterated their commitment to ensuring 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."  To 
this end, a number of Research Councils have announced policies 
that will require deposit of research articles in open access 
repositories.

David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe, said "This is a vitally 
important step in making available UK research results to all 
researchers within the UK and beyond.  Mandating deposit of 
research articles will increase the dissemination and utility of 
these articles, providing access to all interested readers."

Three Councils (covering biotechnology and biological sciences, 
economics and social research, and medical research) have made 
deposit of research papers in open access repositories a 
condition of grant.  One Council (responsible for the UK's 
central research laboratories) "strongly encourages" deposit, 
while the remaining four do not yet have policies in places. (It 
is expected that two of these will make announcements by the end 
of 2006).

According to Prosser, "It is obviously disappointing that a year 
after publication of the initial RCUK draft policy some Councils 
have not developed mandates for open access.  However, we should 
not lose sight of the major move forward by three of the 
Councils.  These are the first deposit mandates adopted by any 
Government funding bodies internationally. The lessons of 
less-successful 'encouragement' policies, such as the NIH policy 
in the US, have been learnt and the UK is now in a leading 
position with respect to the dissemination of its research 
outputs.  We hope that other countries -- and the remaining UK 
Councils! -- move quickly to ensure that they benefit from the 
increased use of research papers that comes from open access."

***

About SPARC Europe

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 
Europe is an alliance of 110 research-led university libraries 
from 14 European countries.  It is affiliated with SPARC based in 
Washington, DC, which represents over 200 institutions 
internationally.  SPARC Europe and SPARC work to develop and 
promote new models of scholarly communication that increase the 
access to and utility of the research literature.  SPARC Europe 
is located on the web at <http://www.sparceurope.org/> . SPARC is 
at www.arl.org/sparc.

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