Papers arising from work funded by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) should be deposited in an open-access repository "at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication, in accordance with copyright and licensing arrangements," according to a draft policy that RCUK made public in July.
RCUK, the umbrella group for the United Kingdom's eight government-funded research councils, published the current draft on its Web site, giving interested parties until the end of August to register their comments.
The wording of the document has been carefully chosen in order "not to over-rule any existing copyright agreements," says Astrid Wissenburg from the Economic and Social Research Council, who is coordinating the development of the policy. Earlier drafts had specified a time frame within which articles had to be deposited, similar to the policy recently implemented by the Wellcome Trust.
"But we came to the conclusion that any specific...
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