RCUK mandate: divide and conquer

UK repositories have been given both an opportunity and a headache by the RCUK's latest position on mandating open access to publications based on work funded by the research councils.

Following its excellent original proposals on a mandate in June 2005 - the long delay a sure sign that all was not going smoothly - the RCUK has broken its silence to follow-up on implementation. The bad news is that the constituent member research councils were not able to agree on a common implementation. The good news is that in adopting the policy to be designated by the individual research councils, some councils have announced the immediate adoption of the mandate, leading Stevan Harnad to claim this is "enough to restore the UK's commanding lead in worldwide OA Policy today."

For the record, the three research councils to adopt the mandate so far are:
Medical, Biotechnology & Biological Sciences, and Economic & Social research councils.

For an excellent summary of the positions of all research councils, noting the key implementation factors, see David Prosser's spreadsheet attached to this list mail.

UK repositories can make great use of these mandates to promote usage and increase the rate of deposit. The headache arises from the range of positions adopted by the research councils and even the lack of clarity in the current mandates, what Stevan Harnad calls the 'WHEN and WHERE to deposit'

Repository managers will have to keep up with these policies as they take effect, and with changes to the policies, and will need to keep local researchers properly informed of how the mandates affect them in their subject areas. There may even be the chance to build an institutional mandate on top of the research council mandates, to provide an even playing field for all researchers within your institution.

How all these developments might interact is summarised by David Goodman: "There will 8 different policies to contend with, and for those in the ambit of the Wellcome Trust, there will be 9. Every publisher will probably have its own set of details, mostly intended to be worked out to harmonize with the relevant societies. Possibly, each university may also have its own. UK researchers will need to know and comply with, whichever combination(s) may be relevant. ... this opens up a wide new area for user instruction."

The reward of more content should make it all worthwhile.

Update (July 18. 2006). Complementing David Prosser's spreadsheet, I forgot to mention Sherpa's Juliet listing ("JULIET is a complement to the RoMEO service", ha!), which as well as the eight UK research councils also has records covering the NIH and Wellcome Trust policies.