Earlier this week, the three major Canadian research funding agencies released a new draft for a harmonized open access policy amongst the three organizations. Once finalized, this policy will apply to all researchers who receive a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
The proposed policy will advance important rules to help ensure that publicly-funded research in Canada is both accessible and beneficial to the public. Foremost, the rules will require researchers to make their results openly available within one year of publication.