Access To Research - Comment

Research Councils UK (RCUK), a partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils recently announced a new access policy for the research they fund. Alexandra Saxon explains the new policy and what it means for researchers.

Access to the outputs of the research that we fund has always been something that the Research Councils have taken seriously. As the majority of our funding comes via the public purse it should be easy to access the findings from that research. In 2005 individual Research Councils launched their Open Access policies. But the Open Access agenda has moved on rapidly in the intervening years which is why, in July, we launched a new Research Councils UK (RCUK) policy on Access to Research Inputs.

Gone are the seven individual Council policies as the new RCUK policy harmonizes and makes significant changes to the existing Research Councils’ Open Access policies. The new policy, which has been informed by the recommendations of the National Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (the Finch Group), has at its heart the drive to make the research that we fund immediately open to access and to reuse as soon as it is published. [...]