HEFCE and RCUK clash on open-access licence policy

Academics taking part in the next Research Excellence Framework will be able to submit work published under a licence that protects it from commercial reuse, while still complying with open-access requirements.

The arrangement, which clashes with Research Councils UK’s rules, is set out in the UK higher education funding councils’ policy for open access in the post-2014 REF. The policy allows academics to publish papers they wish to submit to the REF under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, meaning the work cannot be used for commercial purposes or in derivative works and the author must be credited in the case of republication.

This contrasts with RCUK’s requirement for RCUK papers to be published under a CC BY licence, allowing both commercial and derivative use. RCUK-funded authors publishing under a CC BY licence can comply fully with the REF policy; the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s advice is merely that CC BY-NC-ND would be sufficient for inclusion in the REF.