Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 3 June 2009 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2009.538
Corrected online: 3 June 2009
News
Open-access publishing gains another convert
University College London joins rapidly growing throng.
University College London (UCL) has become the latest institution to adopt an open-access publishing policy, adding to a rapid increase in such mandates over the past year.
Open-access analysts say the move foreshadows a series of announcements from many other UK universities that have been considering similar policies.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
For some background context, see: --- (1) UCL adopts UK's 22nd Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate; Planet's 84th -- http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/586-guid.html --- and --- (2) Which Green OA Mandate Is Optimal? -- http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html ---- Stevan Harnad -- http://www.crsc.uqam.ca
P.S. Of course UCL's OA mandate will "improve public access to scientific research papers," as not all research funders worldwide have as yet mandated OA and, even more important, not all scientific research is funded, and not all research is scientific! Universities and research institutions are the "slumbering giant" of OA, and the universal providers of research, both funded and unfunded: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/522-guid.html
UCL's Open Access mandate was actually adopted in October 2008, but only announced in June 2009. It would be helpful if all universities that adopt mandatory policies on Open Access would register them immediately upon adoption in the ROARMAP database (http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/). Being able to see the details of existing policies helps other institutions that are developing their own and means that new policies are included in summary data like the chart above at the soonest possible moment.
As I understand it, the mandate was approved in October 2008, and use to upload some RAE 2008 and PhD outputs, but not extended across all UCL research until now.