Another OA mandate from the UK

The UK's Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) has decided to mandate OA to PPARC-funded research.  Excerpt from its new policy (October 19):

PPARC supports the sentiments in the RCUK position statement on research outputs and, following discussions with the other Research Councils, has decided that for grants arising from proposals submitted after 1 December 2006, it will be a requirement of the grant that the full text of any articles resulting from the grant that are published in journals or conference proceedings, whether during or after the period of the grant, must be deposited, at the earliest opportunity, in an appropriate e-print repository, wherever such a repository is available, subject to compliance with publishers' copyright and licensing policies. Wherever possible, the article deposited should be the published version.

In addition, the bibliographical metadata (including a link to the publisher's web site) must wherever possible be deposited, at or around the time of publication, in the relevant e-print repository.

This policy will be reviewed on completion, expected in 2008, of a project to be commissioned by RCUK, with the involvement of journal publishers, to investigate the impact of author-pays and self-archiving on research publication.

Comment.  This is an important development.  PPARC is the fifth of the eight Research Councils UK to adopt an OA mandate.  Here's the current tally:  five have mandates (BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, and PPARC), one has opted for mere encouragement (CCLRC), and two are still deliberating (AHRC and EPSRC).