{"id":3709,"date":"2023-10-27T10:23:17","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T09:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/openaccess\/?p=3709"},"modified":"2023-10-27T10:25:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T09:25:48","slug":"open-access-week-2023-imperials-research-publications-open-access-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/openaccess\/2023\/10\/27\/open-access-week-2023-imperials-research-publications-open-access-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Access Week 2023: Imperial\u2019s Research Publications Open Access Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This post was written by Ruth Harrison<\/a>, Head of Scholarly Communications Management at Imperial College London.<\/em><\/p>\n

After many years of work, the College will soon be able to announce that we are updating our institutional open access policy to allow researchers to make their peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings available on open access under a CC BY licence at the point of publication with no embargo. This will apply to accepted manuscripts, and enable staff and students to retain their right to reuse the content of those outputs in teaching, research and further sharing of their work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t think many people would disagree with the moral and ethical case for open access to research, and that the principles of <\/span>open research<\/span><\/a> should be more widely applied. This is a global endeavour \u2013 in 2022, UNESCO published its recommendation on Open Science stating:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy promoting science that is more accessible, inclusive and transparent, open science furthers the right of everyone to share in scientific advancement and its benefits as stated in Article 27.1 of the\u202f<\/span>Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Open access publishing has existed for more than two decades now, and in the past 10 years, funders have increasingly required open access to the published outputs of research which public money, ultimately, has enabled. In the UK (and internationally) this has resulted in various policies which researchers, libraries and publishers have had to keep track of, and there are now many models through which open access can be achieved. But this also means considerable \u2018policy stack\u2019 and confusion, with varying workflows and messaging for researchers to keep up with.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Introducing a policy through which author rights to their accepted manuscript are retained is a solution to the policy stack. Based on the lead taken by MIT with their <\/span>open access policy<\/span><\/a>, introduced over a decade ago, and other institutions around the world, within the UK the case has been made that we should adopt the same approach. At Imperial, this began with the introduction of the concept of the UK-SCL – Scholarly Communications Licence \u2013 and has now developed into what will be our Research Publications Open Access Policy (RPOAP). Generally such policies are referred to as rights retention policies or strategies, and we will join over <\/span>20 other UK universities<\/span><\/a> who have already implemented similar policies, including the universities of <\/span>Edinburgh<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Cambridge<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Oxford<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Glasgow<\/span><\/a>, as well as <\/span>Sheffield Hallam<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Swansea<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Queen\u2019s University Belfast<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>N8 institutions<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How does a rights retention policy work?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

There are some key points to make:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n