Several leading UK universities will ask their academics to deposit their accepted manuscripts in free-to-read domains as part of a new pledge to support open access publication.
Under a new commitment agreed by members of the N8 Research Partnership, whose institutions include the universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, researchers will be urged to retain their intellectual property (IP) rights, rather than sign them over to publishers.
By doing so, scholars would be free to post final versions of research articles on institutional repositories, after obtaining a CC BY licence – a move that some publishers will not permit, or only allow after an embargo period, a route to publication known as green open access.
That has led to a stand-off between academics and publishers – with some journals refusing to publish manuscripts where an application for a CC BY licence has been made, whereby the researcher states they own the research.
