The ESRC is committed to the principles articulated in the Research Councils' 2006 statement on access to research outputs (PDF, RCUK website), and to ensuring its research community makes readily available the outputs from the research it funds. It therefore already requires its award holders to offer any data resulting from an award to the UK Data Archive, and details of awards outcomes and outputs are made available through ESRC Society Today.
ESRC's Open Access Policy
ESRC's Open Access Policy, including issues related to this topic such as metadata, submissions and preservation, is available below.
Guidance to ESRC award holders
(see Open Access Policy for futher details)
For all grants awarded as a result of applications submitted from 1 October 2006, it is mandatory, at the earliest opportunity, to:
- deposit a copy of any resultant articles published in journals or conference proceedings, in the ESRC Social Sciences repository (ESRC Society Today).
- wherever possible, deposit the bibliographical metadata relating to such articles, including a link to the publisher's website, at or around the time of publication, in the ESRC Social Sciences repository (ESRC Society Today).
ESRC also encourages, but does not formally oblige, all award holders to deposit articles arising from grants awarded as a result of applications before 1 October 2006.
Which version of the article should be deposited depends upon publishers' agreements with their authors. ESRC's guidance is that its funded researchers should deposit the outputs from any research in the ESRC awards and outputs repository, where this is permitted by publishers' licensing or copyright arrangements (see below).
Award holders are also encouraged to submit copies of resultant publications and/or associated metadata with institutional and other appropriate repositories.
Author-pays publishing
With regard to author pays publishing, ESRC's guidance is that authors choose where to place their research and that it is for author's institutions to decide whether they are prepared to use funds from full economic costs (or other income) to pay any page charges or other publishing fees, where the predicted direct costs of dissemination of research outputs will be incurred during the period of the grant. Where these costs are likely to occur after the grant has ended, they should be included in the indirect costs of the Research Organisation.
Publishers' agreements and embargoes
Full implementation of these requirements requires that current copyright and licensing policies, such as embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors. The ESRC's guidance is based on the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies. Under this policy, at no time will individual authors be required to negotiate copyright and licensing arrangements with their publishers.
If possible and/or necessary, the author should amend their copyright agreement with the publisher so that self-archiving is not prohibited; however, this is not required by the ESRC. By using a 'licence to publish', the author retains certain rights for various, scholarly purposes whilst granting the publisher a sole licence for certain copyright related acts which have an economic or commercial objective with respect to the article.
The ESRC will work with publishers to put in place mechanisms for publishers submitting publications on behalf of authors, where this is possible.
Please also refer to the new RCUK guidance on acknowledging funders in journal publications.