[Slashdot] - Major UK Science Funder Will Require Grantees To Make Papers Free

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The UK's leading funding agency has announced that all research it funds must be freely available for anyone to read. Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this report from Science: The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding... About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI's current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for "gold" open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher's website, or choose the "green" route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year. Publishers have insisted that an embargo period is necessary to prevent the free papers from peeling away their subscribers. But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted. The funder's executive champion for open research succinctly explained their rationale. "Publicly funded research should be available for public use by the taxpayer."

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