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National Principles for Open Access Policy Statement
Open Access adds value to research, to the economy and to society. The outputs from publicly-funded research should be publicly available to researchers, but also to potential users in education, business, charitable and public sectors, and to the general public.
National Steering Committee on Open Access Policy A Committee of Irish research organisations is working in partnership to coordinate activities and to combine expertise at a national level to promote unrestricted, online access to outputs1 which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the State.
Ireland already has considerable expertise in developing Open Access to publicly funded research, aligned with international thinking and initiatives, and is now seeking to strengthen its approach to support international developments on Open Access led by the European Commission, Science Europe and other international agencies.
Definition of Open Access We define Open Access as2: “…free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited”.
Common Principles The Committee adopts the following common principles on Open Access policy which provide an overarching framework for individual research organisations policies on Open Access. Please note that individual organisation policies on Open Access may include more specific conditions.
1. This policy confirms the freedom of researchers to publish wherever they feel is the most appropriate. 2. This policy is intended to increase the visibility of, and improve access to, the outputs of research funded by the Irish State, where such research is published by the researcher(s) concerned. 3. This policy is designed to support the free flow of information across national and international research communities; to support the principle of research-enabled teaching and learning and the generation of Open Educational Resources (OER); to contribute to Open Innovation through richer and more effective knowledge transfer and diffusion; and to support greater transparency, accountability and public awareness of the results of publicly funded research. 4. This policy is based on recognised best practice. It is in keeping with the original recommendations of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) Policy on Open Access in relation to scientific publications (2006)3, upon which the European Commission ‘Open Access Pilot in Framework 7’ 4 was built. It is in line with the European Commission ‘Recommendations on Access to and Preservation of Scientific Information’, (July 2012)5, the European Commission ‘Communication Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research 6 and with the BOAI-10 (Budapest Open Access Initiative after 10 years) ‘Recommendations (September 2012).4 It is also in keeping with the combined DECO Ministers’ Declaration entrusting the OECD to work towards commonly agreed ‘Principles and Guidelines on Access to Research Data from Public Funding’ 7. It complements and reinforces pre-existing Open Access policies and practices from Irish research funding organisations, Irish research performing organisations and Irish library and repository groups8.
General Principles
1. Peer reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research should be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an on-going basis. • Every publicly-funded researcher in Ireland shall have deposit rights in an Open Access repository • Authors shall deposit post-prints (or the publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings. • All peer reviewed journal articles and conference publications should be deposited. Other research outputs including books, book chapters, and reports should be deposited where possible. • Deposit should be made as soon as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance for publication, and no later than the date of formal publication. • Metadata shall comprise the full bibliographic and/or descriptive data and should comply with national and international standards and agreements for harvesting, reporting and interoperability.
2. Repositories shall release the metadata immediately upon deposit. Open access to the full text paper should be made immediately upon deposit or upon the publication date at the latest. • publishers’ copyright, licensing and embargo policies must be respected. • Access restrictions to the full text article may be applied as required by certain publishers, however these embargoes should not normally exceed six months for scientific, technical and health science research publications and 12 months for arts, humanities and social sciences research outputs.
3. Researchers are encouraged to publish in Open Access Journals but publishing through Open Access Journals is not necessary to comply with this Open Access policy. Payment of additional Open Access charges through the ‘Gold’ Open Access model is not necessary to comply with this policy. • Researchers and their research funding agencies may choose to pay for this option. ‘Gold’ Open Access complements, but does not replace, the procedures for deposit in an Open Access repository required by this policy. • Research papers published in Open Access Journals must also be deposited in an Open Access repository in the same way as other publications.9
4. A repository is suitable for this purpose when it provides free public access to its contents, supports interoperability with other repositories and with other research information and reporting systems, is harvestable by national portal/s and international aggregators and takes steps toward long-term preservation.
5. Research data should be deposited whenever this is feasible, and linked to associated publications where this is appropriate. • European and national data protection rules must be taken into account in relation to research data, as well as concerns regarding trade secrets, confidentiality or national security. • At a minimum, metadata describing research data and its location and access rights should be deposited. • It is recognized that managing access to research data may be a new approach for many research organisations. This policy is intended to encourage the improvement of discoverability and development of open access to research data over time.
On infrastructure and sustainability
• Open Access repositories should acquire the means to harvest from and re-deposit to other Open Access repositories. • Researchers who have reason to deposit into more than one repository should only have to deposit once. • A repository should support interoperability with other repositories and research information systems, and take steps toward long-term preservation.
On advocacy and coordination
• Suitable coordinating mechanisms and monitoring processes will be investigated to support the implementation of this policy. • All those involved in the Irish research system, including publishers, editors, referees, librarians, funders and researchers should be made aware of standards of professional conduct for Open Access publishing, for example on licensing, editorial process, soliciting submissions, disclosing ownership, the handling of publication fees and the benefits of Open Access publishing. • Opportunities to engage with publishers and journals on the basis of these standards of professional conduct should be explored. Opportunities for time and cost savings and other efficiencies associated with streamlining and removal of duplication from research reporting processes shall be investigated.
Exploiting Open Access
• All research organisations, including research performers and research funders, should assist in the gathering, organising, and disseminating of Open Access metadata in standard formats for all new and old publications. Publishers should be encouraged to cooperate with this effort. • National metrics based on value-added Open Access metrics and explicit funding acknowledgements should be developed and reported.
Implementation The National Steering Committee on Open Access Policy will operate transparently and plans to issue regular statements on its progress in exploring and developing a sustainable national infrastructure, incentives and rewards system to achieve its goals.
It is recommended that these national principles will be effective from January 2013 with individual research organisations determining their own timeframes for implementation. Accepting the existing variations in access to Open Access infrastructure and the different maturity of Open Access policies and practices, a phased approach to implementation will be adopted including initial efforts to broaden the coverage of the Open Access infrastructure beyond Irish universities to include provision for all publicly funded research in Ireland.
Appendix
Organisations involved in the National Steering Committee on Open Access Policy include:
1 Research outputs include peer-reviewed publications, research data and other research artefacts which feed the research process. In most disciplinary areas, the highest priority is often attached to articles in peer-reviewed journals. However, in some disciplines, other publication types will be viewed as equally prestigious. For example, literary scholars are comparably recognised for the publication of new critical editions of, and commentaries on, texts. 2 Definition provided by Open Society Institute (2002). Budapest Open Access Initiative and reaffirmed in 2012 BOAI-10: Budapest Open Access Initiative after 10 years ‘Recommendations’: . http://www.soros.org/ 3 EURAB Report and Recommendations on ‘5cientific Publication: policy on open access , December 2006, http://ec.europa.eu/research/eurab/pdf/eurab_scipub_report_recomm_dec06_en.pdf 4 European Commission ͚Open Access Pilot in Framework 7 (August 2008) http://ec.europa.eu/research/science- society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1300&lang=1 5 European Commission ͚Recommendations on Access to and Preservation of 5cientific Information , July 2012: 6 European Commission ‘Communication Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/era-communication- towards-better-access-to-scientific-information_en.pdf 7 OECD ͚Principles and Guidelines on Access to Research Data from Public Funding http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/9/61/38500813.pdf 8 Details of Irish research funding organisations, research performing organisations and librarian/ repository initiatives involved in this national initiative are listed in Appendix. 9 Open Access through deposit of publications in repositories is called ͚green Open Access ; 0pen Access through publishing in particular journals (some of which may require fees from authors for open access) is called “gold Open Access”).
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