Open access makes published research freely available to people without a subscription. The philosophical basis for open access is that publicly funded research should be publicly available. In addition, humanity is facing considerable challenges in relation to food, water, energy and transport into the future. We need the research community to work together to devise solutions, and excluding a significant number of researchers from the discussion because research output is behind paywalls does not work towards this end goal.
There are generally two ways to make research open access:
- Place a copy of the work in an accessible repository. The University repository www.repository.cam.ac.uk is indexed by Google Scholar.
- Publish the work in an open access journal. This sometimes incurs an article processing charge. Recently publishers have offered a 'hybrid' service where an individual article is open access while the remainder of the journal is under subscription. There is always an article processing charge for hybrid journals.
Cambridge Open Access policy framework
The University of Cambridge is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible and supports its staff in making their research available through Open Access (OA). In keeping with that commitment, it supports the principle that:
the results of research that have been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain
Further details about the University of Cambridge Open Access policy framework are availble here www.osc.cam.ac.uk/oa-policy-landscape/cambridge-open-access-policy-framework
Funder policies
Funders have their own policies on open access and these differ in relation to what is required and the timeframes in which they should be met.
- Details of RCUK, HEFCE, Charities Open Access Fund and Wellcome Trust policies here: http://www.osc.cam.ac.uk/oa-policy-landscape
- Other funder policies are listed here: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/
Complying with funder policies
The Open Access team provides a service to help researchers meet their various funder requirements. The team deposits work into the repository and manages the article processing funds from both the Wellcome Trust and RCUK.
All Cambridge researchers are affected by the HEFCE policy for the post2014 -REF http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201407/.
It is recommended that researchers deposit ALL accepted peer reviewed papers and conference proceedings with an ISSN to the www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk. It is a simple process and the Open Access team will check the work and ensure all funder and publisher requirements are met.