Update on open access publishing

24 Jan 2013

Following the report of the committee chaired by Dame Janet Finch, the Research Councils and the Higher Education Funding Council are in the process of implementing a transition to open access publishing of research outputs.

The University of Manchester is committed to the principle of open access to bring about the widest possible dissemination of our research and scholarship. We also want to ensure that open access is achieved in the most efficient ways, respecting the differences in publication behaviour across disciplines. It is particularly important that no one should feel inhibited from publication as a result of this transition.

We are awaiting the final conditions of this transition and expect to be able to provide a full communication in a few weeks. We will be supporting both ‘Gold’ open access in which we pay article processing charges to publishers and ‘Green’ OA in which a peer-reviewed version of the article is made available via a repository (e.g. eScholar or a subject repository such as arXiv or PubMed Central) within an agreed embargo period.

We have some transition funding from RCUK (allocated in proportion to direct labour costs in grant funding) which we are using to prepare a support system for OA. A proportion of the fund will also be used to pay APCs, but the amount is relatively small, so we aim to use this strategically. We will receive an annual block grant from RCUK to pay for APCs from April this year which will be allocated via Faculties and Schools who will have the support of the University Library in terms of APC processing and the provision of management information.

Further information - including FAQs - will follow shortly. In the meantime, I ask that you refrain from requesting funds until further information has been made available. We do not expect to respond ad hoc to individual requests for funding, and there is no requirement to do this until the RCUK policy comes into effect in April of this year.

Professor Luke Georghiou
Vice-President for Research and Innovation