The Lancet journals welcome a new open access policy

Abstract

The often fractious debate about how best to make publicly funded research more widely accessible and useable has intensified over recent years and is gradually reaching a practicable resolution. For example, the UK's Finch report,1Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research FindingsAccessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications.http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdfDate: June 18, 2012Google Scholar published last June by an independent group of academics, research funders, and publishers, clearly stated that the UK should embrace the transition to open access while recognising that it is important “to ensure that they [researchers] have effective and high-quality channels through which they can publish and disseminate their findings”.Finch recommended that the research councils, together with other public sector bodies, should establish more effective and flexible arrangements to meet the cost of publishing in open access and hybrid journals. As a response, Research Councils UK (RCUK) has reviewed and revised its policy and, from April 1, 2013, new guidance comes into force. The latest revision, released on March 6, supports both “gold” open access (journal mediated, with authors retaining copyright under a CC-BY creative commons license after paying an article processing charge) providing immediate access, and “green” open access (repository mediated, with authors posting the final accepted version of their paper without restriction of use) after an embargo period of 6 months for biomedical research.2RCUK Policy on Open Access and Supporting Guidance.http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUKOpenAccessPolicyandRevisedguidance.pdfDate: March 6, 2013Google ScholarThe Lancet journals welcome and support all efforts to make research more widely accessible and useable in ways that continue to sustain our broad mission to serve clinical medicine and global health. We will, in accordance with the new RCUK policy, offer either a “gold” open access choice with a creative commons license after payment of an article processing charge of US$5000, or a “green” open access solution—where authors can deposit the final accepted version of their paper in any repository they choose 6 months after publication—for all RCUK-funded research papers submitted after April 1. In addition, for the “green” open access solution we will also make the published paper free to access on our websites 6 months after publication.These options and a choice of three different creative commons licenses (CC-BY, CC BY-NC-SA, or CC BY-NC-ND) will be open to authors of all research papers supported by those funders with whom we currently have payment agreements.Clearly, the debate on open access to publicly funded research is evolving and RCUK states that it “will undertake a comprehensive, evidence-based review of the effectiveness and impact of its Open Access policy in 2014”. Given the rapid pace of discussions on open access publication, the Lancet journals will continue to review how we can make all publicly funded research as accessible and useable as possible. The often fractious debate about how best to make publicly funded research more widely accessible and useable has intensified over recent years and is gradually reaching a practicable resolution. For example, the UK's Finch report,1Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research FindingsAccessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications.http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdfDate: June 18, 2012Google Scholar published last June by an independent group of academics, research funders, and publishers, clearly stated that the UK should embrace the transition to open access while recognising that it is important “to ensure that they [researchers] have effective and high-quality channels through which they can publish and disseminate their findings”. Finch recommended that the research councils, together with other public sector bodies, should establish more effective and flexible arrangements to meet the cost of publishing in open access and hybrid journals. As a response, Research Councils UK (RCUK) has reviewed and revised its policy and, from April 1, 2013, new guidance comes into force. The latest revision, released on March 6, supports both “gold” open access (journal mediated, with authors retaining copyright under a CC-BY creative commons license after paying an article processing charge) providing immediate access, and “green” open access (repository mediated, with authors posting the final accepted version of their paper without restriction of use) after an embargo period of 6 months for biomedical research.2RCUK Policy on Open Access and Supporting Guidance.http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUKOpenAccessPolicyandRevisedguidance.pdfDate: March 6, 2013Google Scholar The Lancet journals welcome and support all efforts to make research more widely accessible and useable in ways that continue to sustain our broad mission to serve clinical medicine and global health. We will, in accordance with the new RCUK policy, offer either a “gold” open access choice with a creative commons license after payment of an article processing charge of US$5000, or a “green” open access solution—where authors can deposit the final accepted version of their paper in any repository they choose 6 months after publication—for all RCUK-funded research papers submitted after April 1. In addition, for the “green” open access solution we will also make the published paper free to access on our websites 6 months after publication. These options and a choice of three different creative commons licenses (CC-BY, CC BY-NC-SA, or CC BY-NC-ND) will be open to authors of all research papers supported by those funders with whom we currently have payment agreements. Clearly, the debate on open access to publicly funded research is evolving and RCUK states that it “will undertake a comprehensive, evidence-based review of the effectiveness and impact of its Open Access policy in 2014”. Given the rapid pace of discussions on open access publication, the Lancet journals will continue to review how we can make all publicly funded research as accessible and useable as possible. Open access policyWe welcome The Lancet's stance on open access (April 6, p 1166).1 We note that you wish to review how you can make all publicly funded research as accessible and usable as possible. However, we also note that even with the announced changes, The Lancet will still have less free access than other key general medical journals. For example, there is free access to all research articles in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) after 6 months from 1998, in the New England Journal of Medicine after 6 months from 1990, and in The British Medical Journal immediately from 1840 onwards. Full-Text PDF Open access policy – Authors' replyJudith Glynn and Sara Thomas raise important questions about our current policy to offer open access publications as outlined in our recent Comment.1 Our announcement is only a first step in a fast evolving movement towards making publicly funded research as accessible as possible, and we are continuously reviewing our approach. However, many of our research papers—all those reporting global health research—are already routinely made free to access immediately at publication. In addition, we are launching the first open access journal within the Lancet family, The Lancet Global Health, on June 25, this year. Full-Text PDF