About Open Science
Open Science is the umbrella term for a global movement to make all aspects of science and knowledge generation publically available to everyone, for free, via the internet. The area of work has many aspects, and it is useful to understand some basic definitions:
Open Science: research outputs (in general) that are made publicly available for free at the point of access.
Open Access (OA): Typically, this refers to journal articles which are made publicly available for free at the point of access (although some limited work is underway on Open Access Monographs). This can be achieved by two 'routes':
'Green' Open Access: refers to publications which are placed in institutional or subject repositories, often after a publisher imposed embargo period. Publishers often impose copyright and re-use restrictions on such publications.
'Gold' Open Access: refers to publications where 'Article Processing Charges' (APCs) are paid to the publisher, in return for immediate and unrestricted access to the full text to anyone in the world.
Open research data: the data underpinning scientific research results that have no restrictions on their access, enabling anyone to access them through the internet.
UUK's work to support Open Science
UUK takes a lead role in a range of sector activities to support the Open Science agenda in the UK. We are also a member of several other groups which are active in this space.
Our work in this area has three strands, and more information about each strand is available by following the links below: