Jisc is working to help universities and researchers reap the benefits offered from OA practice in response to the recent OA policy review by Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the release of the Higher Education and Funding Council's (HEFCE) updated requirements for next year's Research Excellence Framework (REF).
There are many benefits offered from an OA model, increased author visibility and improved accessibility to research outputs to name a few. But with such new and evolving systems we need to get the infrastructure in place to ensure researchers and universities gain the maximum benefit.
RCUK's policy review offered various recommendations which will help to continue to build this infrastructure; including immediately exploring how they can incorporate the use of ORCID, a research identifier that allows to track research outputs by individuals, in their systems. Jisc recently established a national consortium for ORCID to make it simpler for UK universities to start using it, and already have over 22 universities signed up.
Some current Jisc tools and solutions to support a cost effective and sustainable OA model include:
SHERPA/FACT – Jisc's funders and authors' compliance tool which allows customers to check funder policy information. It has been found to be more than 95 percent accurate when checking publisher policies against funder mandates for OA. A similar service for the REF OA policy is scheduled for release in September; Practitioner group - Jisc has supported the emergence of an HE OA good practice community through pathfinder projects and related events and materials, which will help HEIs to play a full and informed role in the practitioner group; CC-BY licences - Jisc's guide to Creative Commons released from the OAPEN-UK project.
There are still additional areas of uncertainty around OA, including around systems interoperability, measures to support compliance in subject repositories and the expectations around staff movement between institutions.
