Librarians turn up the heat over open access in REF

Research Libraries UK, a network of Russell Group university libraries and national libraries, is in talks with the Higher Education Funding Council for England on making open-access publishing a requirement of the Research Excellence Framework. The group plans to intensify its pressure on publishers, funding agencies and policymakers to ensure that publicly funded research is available in open-access repositories. The group has already warned journal publishers Wiley-Blackwell and Elsevier that it will not renew subscriptions at current prices.