Research England (formerly HEFCE) has announced the release of a new report: “Monitoring sector progress towards compliance with funder open access policies” (PDF). This reports the results from a UK-wide survey conducted in late 2017 looking at how universities are managing compliance with the REF, UKRI (formerly RCUK) & other funder open access policies.
The widely-reported headline finding has been “Over 80% of research outputs meet requirements of REF 2021 open access policy” but Cambridge University’s Danny Kingsley has written in response on their “Unlocking Research” blog: “Compliance is not the whole story” picking up a key point made in the report, that “the increased open access to research is resulting from considerable effort on the part of researchers, libraries, research offices”.
Read the report here (3 page Executive Summary available!)
Helen Snaith’s blog post for Research England: “REFlecting on progress towards open access”
David Sweeney for WONKHE: “Open Access – are we almost there for REF?”
Danny Kingsley’s response “Compliance is not the whole story”.