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ISSUES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION:
News for the University of Illinois Community

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June 22, 2005

LEADING UK RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES ENDORSE OPEN ACCESS

By Peter Suber

The Russell Group of UK universities has issued a Statement on Scholarly Communication and Publishing endorsing open access. Here's the statement in its entirety:

The Russell Group, in association with the Joint CURL/SCONUL Scholarly Communications Group, has adopted the following statement on scholarly communication and publishing.

• The Russell Group supports the principle that publicly-funded research should be publicly available.
  
• The Russell Group believes that the current system of scholarly publishing does not always work in the best interests of the research community.
  
• Russell Group institutions support the development of institutional repositories of research papers, and will actively encourage their researchers to deposit their work in them.
  
• The publication charge model of journal publishing is still in its early stages but warrants further consideration. The Russell Group would encourage further research and development on the feasibility of the model.
  
• The Russell Group supports discussion of these issues in fora such as UUK, RCUK and Government departments, as well as within institutions.
  

The Russell Group consists of 19 major research universities (including Oxford and Cambridge) that receive 60% of the research grants in the UK, analogous to the AAU in the US. (Thanks to SHERPA News.)

Posted by at June 22, 2005 6:05 PM

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