Here is the place to find briefings and information as well as BERA’s public statements on open access developments.

Latest uploads are the responses from the Academy of Social Science to recent consultations from both HEFCE and RCUK. BERA fed into these responses and endorses the points raised.

March 2014 – HEFCE have announced their latest policy on OA – http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/policy/

April 2014 – As the British Academy releases a new study on Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the study’s lead investigator, Chris Wickham discusses the results.

Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences: An Interview with Chris Wickham

BERA continues to monitor developments around Plan S and open access. Our Executive Director is part of a small AcSS working group of learned societies and also contributing to a Wellcome Trust funded research project looking at the implications. We are also working with other societies as part of the newly formed Society Publisher’s Coalition. We remain concerned at how current proposals might negatively impact UK researchers’ freedom to publish in a journal of their choice, researchers from the global south, the pathways to publications for practitioners and ECRs as well as the financial sustainability of journals and learned societies. Some of these concerns were outlined in the AcSS’s response to the UKRI consultation earlier this year – https://www.acss.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AcSS-Plan-S-Final.pdf