Funders' mandates
A number of funding bodies in the UK have in the last couple of years chosen to adopt open access mandates for data and research publications resulting from funded projects. The various funders (AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC and the Wellcome Trust) have chosen to implement these mandates in different ways depending on the type of content and the funder's wish and ability to influence journal publishers. List of research funders' archiving mandates and guidelines.
Research Councils UK open access principles
- Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.
- Published research outputs must be subject to rigorous quality assurance, through effective peer review mechanisms.
- The models and mechanisms for publication and access to research results must be both efficient and cost-effective in the use of public funds.
- The outputs from current and future research must be preserved and remain accessible for future generations.
An overview of funding bodies' open access policies for journal articles and research data can be found at the SHERPA/JULIET service.
Archiving requirements
The mandates generally specify details as to when a research paper should be archived, what should be archived (version of paper) and where to archive. Examples of mandate requirements are:
- Deposit in institutional repository (IR)
- Deposit in national repository e.g. the UK Depot, (unusual, possibly only applicable if there is no repository within the funded institution).
- Deposit in discipline repository (e.g. UK PubMed Central used by Wellcome Trust).
- Deposit in the funding body’s own repository (e.g. NERC Open Research Archive (NORA))
- Usually the researcher can choose to deposit in any of these
Examples of practice
Key Recommendations from the University of Nottingham: " The key recommendation from the Research Councils is that where possible, research outputs - peer-reviewed articles, book-chapters, etc - that arise from a grant should be made available through an Open Access route. Material that is Open Access is freely available through the web, without using any of the special licences and subscriptions that universities and other readers currently have to hold in order to give access for staff. The purpose of the recommendation is to increase the dissemination, readership and use of funded research.
Research in this area has shown positive benefits for academics such that making their work available in this way increases readership and citations. It is important to note that this does not alter any current dissemination or publication process. It does not affect peer-review in any way. This is a supplement to normal dissemination methods and is in no way a replacement."
DSpace@Cambridge, the institutional repository of the University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge maintains an institutional repository called DSpace@Cambridge. University staff are encouraged to use this resource both to meet the specific requirements of funding bodies and to deposit any other research material that staff choose to make available through open access.