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 publishers, who undertake the bulk of the work in depositing their publications in UKPMC.

Funders’ policies

7.62. The UK Research Councils and other major funders such as the Wellcome Trust require any peer-reviewed publications arising from work they fund that are not published in open access or hybrid journals to be made accessible via a repository as soon as possible. The policies vary in detail, and among the Research Councils, only the MRC currently specifies a maximum embargo period, of six months; the other Councils require deposit and access in compliance with licensing and copyright arrangements. There are differences also in requirements as to precisely what is deposited: the submitted manuscript, the accepted manuscript, or the published paper.

7.63. Research Councils’ current policies have been in place since 2006. Given the timing of applications and awards, the average length of grants, and the delays before publication, it is only in the last couple of years that assessing compliance has been feasible on any kind of systematic basis. The Councils have recently established systems for comprehensive reporting on publications and other outputs, and it should be possible to check compliance levels systematically from next year. The evidence suggests, however, that rates of compliance are at present generally low. The Councils have been considering how to consolidate their policies, and they have recognised—as they have been required to do by Government —the need to make more efforts to raise awareness of their policies across the HE and research communities. Proposals have been circulated which include a requirement that publications should be made freely accessible either immediately upon publication, with unrestricted rights of use and re-use, where an APC is paid; or, where an APC is not paid, within six months (twelve months for publications arising from work funded by the AHRC and the ESRC, at least for an interim period,).

Publishers’ restrictions

7.64. For open access publishers which receive their revenues in the form of APCs before articles are published, repositories arouse few concerns: they regard them as complementary channels for disseminating the articles, and hence allow access to them via repositories as well as via their own publishing platform. Subscription-based publishers, on the other hand, tend to regard repositories as rival channels and as a threat to their subscription revenues and thus to the viability of their journals. They have therefore responded to the rise of repositories with a range of policies that reflect those concerns. Most impose a range of constraints, in the form of embargos, restrictions on what version of a paper can be deposited, and on the