Encouraging Openness and how stakeholder policies can support or block it!Encouraging Openness and how stakeholder policies can support or block it!
Funders, authors and readers may want open access to research, but can they achieve it? A researcher who has been encouraged to make their work open has to deal with regulations, guidance, and mandates from their institution, their funders, their publisher and their national government. These policies are often complex and can be ambiguous, or in conflict with each other.
A supportive policy environment and guidance through the relationship of one policy to another has proved to be essential for real progress in opening access to research. How should policies support the researcher and the research process? How can policies based on commercial profit fit into an open environment? What role do funders have in protecting their investment and the public interest?
Authors:
Bill Hubbard
Bill Hubbard is the Director of the Centre for Research Communications (CRC) at the University of Nottingham, incorporating the work of SHERPA. The CRC has a portfolio of Open Access projects and services and is a recognised centre of expertise for OA development, policy, repositories and infrastructure.
Bill created the award-winning OA services RoMEO, JULIET and OpenDOAR, which are used around the world to unpick details of stakeholder policies, development policy and which underpin repository use. The CRC have also recently launched FACT, to support researchers in complying with specific RCUK and Wellcome Trust OA polices. Bill has also worked closely with OA publishers and advised on the transitions involved for commercial publishers from traditional to OA business models.
