United Kingdom Scholarly Communications model policy and licence. A presentation which sets the context for the UK model university open access policy based on the Harvard model policy

1. United Kingdom Scholarly Communications
model policy and licence
October 2017
Prepared by Chris Banks on behalf of the UK-SCL Steering Group
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2. Overview
• Funder Open Access Policy environment
– Consequences of multiple funder policies – the policy
stack
– Minimum compliance/eligibility criteria
– Funder encouragement to go beyond the minimum
• Need for university open access policies to align with
funder policies and to support researchers
– Steps being taken in Universities
– Steps being taken nationally to align university OA
policies
• Publisher responses

3. RCUK
• Preference for gold but
accepts green
• Some institutions are funded
for gold
• Minimum compliance: CC-BY-
NC for green
• Varying maximum embargo
periods for the first five years
depending on whether
institution has funds for gold
Funder policy differences
REF2021 OA policy
• Author Accepted Manuscript
must be placed in a repository
(aiming for within 3 months of
Acceptance but for first two
years of policy – within 3 months
of publication)
• Agnostic about Green / Gold
• No funding
• Minimum compliance: CC-BY-
NC-ND with 12/24 month
embargoes
3

4. And that is just two funders
• Many funder policies:
• Different compliance requirements
• Differently funded (or not)
• Many publisher policies
• Some publisher have different policies
depending on who funds the
researcher
• HEFCE policy in particular, differs
substantially from other policies and applies
to all UK academics
• Many publisher policies are not in line with
HEFCE policy
• Difficult to know what to do to comply with
Funder policies and for outputs to be
REF2021 eligible

5. Funders encourage institutions to go
beyond the minimum (and will give
credit for doing so). HEFCE:

6. The Funding Councils also say:

7. Meanwhile, UK researchers
face the “policy stack”
challenge
• Many funder policies:
• Different compliance requirements
• Differently funded (or not)
• REF policy in particular, differs substantially from other
policies and applies to all UK research academics
• Many publisher policies
• Some publisher have different policies depending on
who funds the researcher
• Many publisher policies are not in line with REF policy
• Difficult to know what to do to comply both with Funder and
REF policies (e.g. very easy to comply with RCUK but fall foul
of REF2021 eligibility)
• Institutional OA and IP policies not in alignment with funder
policies, so don’t best support academics.

9. Institutions
• Want to support researchers in the retention of re-use rights, especially as
more and more journal submission systems will only allow transfer of © to
the publisher, not retention of rights by the author(s)
• Recognise that IP, copyright and open access policies are not necessarily
supporting funder compliance – something needs to be done
• Variety of approaches to academic IP observed across UK institutions
• Legally, in the UK: employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work
(subject to any agreement to the contrary) created “in the course of
employment” which courts have typically taken to mean ‘contract of
service’ (e.g. as an employee) rather than a ‘contract for services’ (e.g. as a
freelancer or independent contractor). Institutions have generally not
asserted this right but are increasingly considering doing so.
• See the UK-SCL as a mechanism for academics to retain rights whilst still
enabling them to assign © with a publisher

10. Institutional open access policies need to work in
harmony with funder policies and so many have been
in need of revision

11. Publishers
• Have varying approaches to copyright, from licence to
first publish, to outright copyright transfer. Academics are
rarely given a choice
• Licenses are generally not read by academics –
researchers are more interest in the journal than in the
agreement
• This is a problem not confined to publishing – how many
have read the android google agreement? Social media
agreements?
• In 2012 Time magazine reported Carnegie Mellon funded
research which concluded: You’d Need 76 Work Days to
Read All Your Privacy Policies Each Year

12. Library
• Wanting to create frictionless services
• Needing to upscale services to all researchers –
REF2021 OA policy
• Can’t easily give answer to researchers on OA
options - need to ask them lots of questions first
(who funds, where publishing) before advising of OA
options/requirements
• Working with researchers to understand challenges
and opportunities

13. Why an OA policy revision is
needed, and what it needs
to do
• Need to ensure that institutional policies are in alignment
with funder (RCUK, REF, etc.) policies
• Publisher policies vary considerably – many do not enable
easy compliance with both funder(s) and REF policies
• Want to preserve academic choice as to where to publish,
including academic freedom to sign whatever licence/©
transfer agreement is necessary (whilst separately continuing
to encourage scrutiny of those licenses)
• Desire to maximise impact of publication
• Desire to retain some re-use rights for use in teaching etc.,
including rights in diagrams and graphs produced for the
publication. Presently, items deposited in the repository often
cannot be used in teaching until after the embargo has passed

14. Options explored

15. Harvard model policy
chosen
Key components:
• Implemented as part of university OA policy
• Academics deposit Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs)
and grant a non-exclusive licence to the university for all
journal articles
• Well established policy – has been in use since 2008
• Where a journal seeks a waiver, this can be managed by
exception (happens <5% in the USA)
• Used by over 60 institutions worldwide
• From Harvard and MIT
• To smaller institutions, including two in Kenya

17. Summary of process
• Harvard model policy reviewed in the context of UK
© law
• Model policy adjusted for UK law, and to ensure it
facilitated funder deposit compliance and REF
eligibility
• Institutions reviewed IP policies to ensure alignment
• Institutions reviewed employment contracts (some
contain © and IP policy statements within them,
others refer to external policies)

18. Key components of the
new model policy
• Retain the right to make accepted manuscripts of scholarly articles
authored by its staff available publicly under the CC BY NC (4.0)
licence from the moment of first publication (or earlier if the
publisher’s policy allows).
• Allow authors and publishers to request a temporary waiver for
applying this right for up to 12 months for AHSS and 6 months for
STEM (aligned to REF panels).
• Where a paper is co-authored with external co-authors, the
institution will:
– Automatically sub-licence this right all co-authors credited on
the paper and their host institutions.
– Not apply the licence if a co-author (who is not based at an
institution with a UK-SCL-based model policy) objects.
– Honour waiver requests granted by other institutions which
have adopted the UK-SCL model policy.

19. Next steps by the
community
• 60 institutions overall interested
• First mover group ~ 12 institutions
• Ongoing discussions with publishers
• Wider engagement with the researcher, library,
research office and legal office communities
• Website and advocacy materials: ukscl.ac.uk
• Boilerplate texts for authors, collaboration
agreements etc., being drafted
• Steering Committee established
• Responding to publisher concerns and perceptions

20. Publisher responses
• Some very positive responses from some publishers,
including pure gold (e.g. PLoS) but also learned
society (Royal Society). Other publishers are in
discussion with Steering Group members with a view
to aligning their policies with the UK-SCL
• Other publishers less happy but now in dialogue with
the Steering Group through membership bodes:
Publishers’ Association and the Association of
Learned and Professional Society Publishers

21. Researcher concerns
• The need to seek agreement from co-authors (particularly for those
collaborations commenced before policy adoption)
– Can be addressed through a phased/gradual implementation and
supported by the library
• Fear that a publisher will refuse to publish
– Institutions using the Harvard model report no instances of this
happening
• Learned Societies – fear loss of income
– Publishers add value and readers prefer continue to prefer the Version
of Record rather than the Author Acceptance Manuscript. No reliable
research evidence to back up Learned Society fears.
• Don’t like the CC-BY-NC licence
– This was chosen so that it complied with RCUK where a ND licence is
not compliant

22. Further reading &
watching
• Banks, C., (2016). Focusing upstream: supporting scholarly
communication by academics. Insights. 29(1), pp.37–44.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.292
• Torsten Reimer, UK Scholarly Communications, Licence and Model
Policy, https://zenodo.org/record/153928#.WLaz9G-LREY
• “Focusing upstream” – recording of talk given at UKSG 11 April
2017: https://tv.theiet.org/?videoid=10043
• “Copyright and Licensing session : Rights as the foundation of
scholarly communication” – outputs (ppt and recording) from talk
given at the OAI10 – CERN – UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in
Scholarly Communication
https://indico.cern.ch/event/405949/contributions/2487876/
• Responses to concerns raised by the Publishers’ Association:
http://bit.ly/2yAmyRm and http://bit.ly/2yFUkDW

23. Credits
• All those who originally developed the “Harvard” model
• Dr Torsten Reimer (formerly Imperial, now British Library)
• Simon Bains (Manchester)
• RCUK
• HEFCE
• Wellcome
• RLUK for funding much of the legal costs
• Many RLUK and LERU librarians

24. ukscl.ac.uk