Dear Audrey

Research Councils UK and Wellcome Trust require CC-BY licence when an article processing charge (APC) is levied: an open letter to publishers.

Following our recent meeting we would be most grateful if you could make your members aware of the recent open access policy changes made by the Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.  Specifically, all research paper submitted for publication after the 1st April 2013, funded by any of the UK Research Councils or the Wellcome Trust and published under an “author pays” model must be licensed using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY).

We believe that the full research and economic benefit of published content will only be realised when there are no restrictions on access to, and reuse of, this information.  We believe the goal must be to unleash that content whilst still allowing publishers to recoup their costs in an effective market.

From a funder perspective, CC-BY achieves this aim, and has now emerged as the standard licence for open access (OA) publishing.  Indeed, PubMed Central now contains more than 200,000 OA articles with the CC-BY licence.

We are pleased that a number of publishers have already responded positively to the request to offer a CC-BY licence – for example, see the recent press releases from NPG and Wiley – and hope that others will follow.

If a publisher does not offer a CC-BY licence option, RCUK and Wellcome Trust-funded authors can continue to seek publications in such journals, but only if the author is permitted to self-archive the author manuscript within 6 months of publication (or 12 for AHRC and ESRC funded researchers).

Further information about the CC-BY licence can be found on the Wellcome Trust web site and in this RCUK blog post.

As you are aware we have a follow-up meeting scheduled for mid-February and it would be extremely helpful to discuss any issues your members may have at that meeting. 

Yours sincerely 

Robert Kiley, Head Digital Services, Wellcome Library, Wellcome Trust
Mark Thorley, Head of Science Information, Natural Environment Research Council * Chair of RCUK Research Outputs Network