OA at Stirling

The University of Stirling has become the first academic institution in the UK to oblige staff to make all their published research available online.
Stirling is leading the way in open access to its research work, after the University’s Academic Council issued an institutional mandate which requires self-archiving of all theses and journal articles.
PMR: Nostalgia – I used to sit on the Academic council…
Professor Ian Simpson, Deputy Principal (Research and Knowledge Transfer) said: “We believe that the outcomes of all publicly funded research should be made available as widely as possible. By ensuring free online access to all our research output, we will maximise the visibility and impact of the University’s work to researchers worldwide.”
The four year project to create STORRE (Stirling Online Research Repository) has been brought to fruition by information technology specialists Clare Allan and Michael White.
Clare Allan said: “The University now requires all published journal articles to be deposited by authors, as soon as possible after they are accepted for publication, and in compliance with the publishers’ copyright agreements.
“It is an important landmark in our archival development and marks the conclusion of a process that started in 2004 when Stirling was one of 20 academic institutions which signed up to the OATS (Open Access Team for Scotland) declaration. The repository project initially focused on electronic theses and in session 2006/07 we became one of the first universities to require these to be submitted electronically.
“The next stage was a pilot scheme for self-archiving of journal articles by some researchers, and this has now become mandatory. We are also building up a retrospective archive.” …
Michael White added: “We are hopeful of a very positive response from researchers to the requirement to self-archive, as they will benefit from greater visibility of their work – such as increased citations from their published work, which in turn can lead to improved funding. To quantify this, they can track how often each article is viewed.” …

PS Comment. The Stirling policy is not only the first university-level OA mandate in the UK [PMR: PS corrected this – Soton beat them by a few days] , but the second worldwide (after Harvard’s) to be adopted by faculty rather than administrators. Moreover, it’s detailed and strong. I’m especially glad to see that it requires deposit “immediately upon acceptance for publication” even if it permits delayed OA “until the item has been published, and until any publishers’ or funders’ embargo period has expired.” Kudos to all involved.

PMR: We’ve already benefitted from the Open theses available from Stirling and use them as exemplars for our Spectra-T work.

It is clear decisions like this, pushing the frontiers of Open Access which help to change the world. The more that this happens, the greater the courage it gives to others. Stirling – as a new (1967) University was always keen to innovate and I’m proud to feel part of this. (We had our 40th re-union last autumn).