Partnering on Copyright

Changing the rights culture in HEIs

Access to research materials is being revolutionised through their deposit in an Open Access (OA) environment. HEIs have a very important role in achieving OA by changing the rights culture in HEIs and the scholarly publishing community, thereby facilitating increased access to research. From the perspective of the HEI itself, a valuable way to take part in Open Access developments is to routinely perform self-archiving, that is, placing a copy of a researcher’s published work in an online institutional repository (IR), where it is freely available to all. This is a rapidly developing trend: for example, the SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) project has helped establish IRs in 20 institutions, including the universities of Oxford, Nottingham and Edinburgh. Sixteen of the 19 top research-led universities of the Russell Group have also set up IRs, and has recently released a statement supporting OA..

In this section you will learn the benefits of OA, in what ways it may be achieved and how to:

• Help ensure the IR is successful
• Address the costs and practical issues
• Understand the copyright implications of self-archiving and IRs
• Get more information and advice

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