Wellcome this week has published a set of requirements for open access publications, which will come into force next spring. Jisc as well as, SCONUL, ARMA, UKCoRR and RLUK are supportive of these requirements.
The policy outlines what is required of publishers in order to receive article processing charges (APCs) from the charity. These include uploading articles to PubMed Central (PMC), updating them if they are corrected or retracted, publishing content under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) and offering a reimbursement policy for APCs.
Neil Jacobs, head of scholarly communications support at Jisc, notes: “It is incredibly helpful to have a funder of Wellcome’s standing be so clear about its expectations in this area. APCs already constitute a multi-million pound market, which makes it important that everyone is clear about what is being paid for.”
Publishers are requested to sign up to the requirements by 16th December 2016, and they will come into force on 1 April 2017. Wiley, SpringerNature, OUP, Royal Society and PLOS, who publish almost 50% of Wellcome funded research outcomes, have all committed to signing up to the requirements.
Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) members Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Parkinson’s UK will all set the same requirements for outcomes of research they have funded. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will also be introducing the requirements when their open access mandate is launched in January 2017.
More information is available on the Wellcome website.