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

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 recently formed Society Publisher’s Coalition (SocPC).

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. 

Learned societies such as BERA use our publishing surpluses to fund our charitable objectives and to support our discipline. As part of the SocPC, we are a diverse range of academic disciplines which face an equally diverse range of challenges in making this transition. Our author base is truly global and we believe that authors must be able to publish in our journals regardless of their funding status or ability to pay. 

The SocPC also submitted a response to the latest consultation. 

The UKRI’s draft policy was released in February 2020. This can be seen below. 

Back in 2013, we published a special issue of Research Intelligence on the subject. Many of the issues raised in this are still to be resolved.