Lecturer: Dunja Legat, MA, University of Maribor Library, Slovenia
Free and open access to the outputs of publicly‐funded research offers significant social and economic benefits as well as aiding the development of new research. The Government, in line with its overarching commitment to transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that published research findings should be freely accessible. As bodies charged with investing public money in research, the Research Councils take very seriously their responsibilities in making the outputs from this research publicly available – not just to other researchers, but also to potential users in business, charitable and public sectors, and to the general tax‐paying public. There are various models for achieving open access, some of which allow more immediate access. The goal is to achieve the preference for immediate, unrestricted, on‐line access to peer‐reviewed and published research papers, free of any access charge and with maximum opportunities for re‐use.
