RLUK is one of 58 organisations calling for the Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers to withdraw its recently released model licenses, that would ’limit the use, reuse and exploitation of research […] make it difficult, confusing or impossible to combine these research outputs with other public resources and sources of knowledge to the benefit of both science and society.’
David Prosser, Executive Director, commented: ‘A main strategic priority for RLUK over the past few years has been in working towards more effective and transparent scholarly communication models, and this is something we will continue to focus on with our 2014-17 strategy. The licenses introduced by STM, by their restrictive and complex nature, act in contradiction to our aims of opening up research to the widest possible audiences. We echo the call for publishers to adopt the globally recognised Creative Commons license framework in the best interests of research and researchers’.