Jisc has welcomed the announcement by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning that from 2016 they will expect all articles submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a system for assessing the quality of research, to be available by open access.
This framework will be used by the HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland to inform the selective allocation of their research funding to higher education institutions. This means that any university which applies for research funding will have to show how they support open access.
This is potentially great news for universities and researchers keen to raise their profile and their impact. However, as with any benefit, it will require some investment on the part of the sector.
Jisc, the Association for Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) , Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) have come together to help universities reduce the investment needed so that good practice and lessons can be shared between those responsible for putting the REF policy into practice.
In a related announcement, the Wellcome Trust has also welcomed the policy statement from HEFCE and the other three UK higher education funding bodies that requires research outputs (journal articles and conference proceedings) arising from their funding to be made open access in order to be eligible for submission to the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework.
Commenting on the policy announcement, Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "We believe that providing access to research outputs maximises the resulting benefits to society. This development - which follows the RCUK open access policy - means that virtually all UK-based researchers in receipt of public funding are now operating under an open access mandate."
