RCUK Open Access Policy – When to go Green and When to go GoldMark Thorley, NERC (Natural Environment Research Council), Head of Science Information and Chair RCUK Research Outputs Network on the Research Councils UK policies concerning open access:
Our policy requires that peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access.(…) So what does this mean for authors? If the journal they want to publish in only offers policy compliance through a Gold route, they must use that journal’s Gold option. (…) if a journal offers neither a Green nor a Gold compliant route, it is not eligible to take RCUK funded work, and the author must use a different, compliant, journal. (…) The Research Councils are not anti-Green and support a dual approach for delivering OA. However, we do have a strong preference for Gold, and I will explain why in my next blog post.