Publishing
Section 4
The UK Research Councils (RCUK) Policy on Open Access is that peerreviewed research papers should be published in journals that, in relation to
the final published version of the paper:
• provide immediate Gold access to it using the Creative Commons'
Attribution Licence, and Green access by allowing immediate deposit in
repositories without restriction on re-use; or
• consent to its deposit in any repository (without restriction on noncommercial re-use) within 6 months of on-line publication in STEM
disciplines and within 12 months of on-line publication in arts,
humanities and social sciences.
Open access publishing generally involves an Article Processing Charge
(APC) to the publisher. Research institutions are expected to establish
funds to meet these costs and so you will need to check what your own
institution will fund. Some funders of research also make provision for
these costs: APCs are supported through RCUK OA block grants. RCUK also
encourages open access to other materials e.g. monographs and books.
Open source software – One particular form of open access is Open source
software (OSS). OSS is software provided under a licence which allows
the source code to be copied, modified and/or redistributed on an almost
unrestricted basis. The Open Source Initiative stewards the compliance of
software with the Open Source Definition (http://opensource.org/docs/
osd), with which OSS should comply, and lists OSS licences which are
approved by them (http://opensource.org/licenses).
There is a wide range of OSS licences. You should always check specific
terms though, as each of the licences varies in some way. If your software
incorporates OSS then you may already be constrained as to how you
deal with it. Some OSS licences for instance require a user to release any
modified version, which in some circumstances can be detrimental to future
commercialisation of the software.
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