Open access to be a requirement for UK research funding

(29 March 2014)  Jisc today welcomed the announcement by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning that from 2016 they will expect all articles submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a system for assessing the quality of research, to be available by open access. 

This framework will be used by the HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland to inform the selective allocation of their research funding to higher education institutions. This means that any university which applies for research funding will have to show how they support open access.

The detailed announcement is here.