Category Archives: OA Mandates

Concordia University opens its research findings to the world

April 22, 2010

Concordia University's academic community has passed a landmark Senate Resolution on Open Access that encourages all of its faculty and students to make their peer-reviewed research and creative output freely accessible via the internet. Concordia is the first major university in Canada where faculty have given their overwhelming support to a concerted effort to make the full results of their research universally available.

For more see: http://library.concordia.ca/research/openaccess/

Duke University adopts Open Access Policy

March 18, 2010

The Academic Council at Duke University unanimously adopted an Open Access policy for scholarly articles written by the Duke faculty. The policy was brought forward by a Provost-appointed committee of faculty and librarians that was chaired by Professor Cathy Davidson and Paolo Mangiafico, Duke's Director of Digital Information Strategy.

For more information see: Scholarly Communications @ Duke Blog

Obama administration wants OA for federally-funded research

The Obama administration wants OA for federally-funded research
December 9, 2009 | Peter Suber’s Blog

The Obama administration is calling for public comments on ways to enhance access to federally-funded research. From today’s announcement:

With this notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, requests input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies. This RFI [Request for Information] will be active from December 10, 2009 to January 7, 2010. Respondents are invited to respond online via the Public Access Policy Forum…or may submit responses via electronic mail. Responses will be re-posted on the online forum. Instructions and a timetable for daily blog topics during this period are described at [the White House Open Government Initiative web site]….

[T]he Administration is dedicated to maximizing the return on Federal investments made in R and D. Consistent with this policy, the Administration is exploring ways to leverage Federal investments to increase access to information that promises to stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness. The results of government-funded research can take many forms, including data sets, technical reports, and peer-reviewed scholarly publications, among others. This RFI focuses on approaches that would enhance the public’s access to scholarly publications resulting from research conducted by employees of a Federal agency or from research funded by a Federal agency….

The Executive Branch is considering ways to enhance public access to peer reviewed papers arising from all federal science and technology agencies. One potential model, implemented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)…requires that all investigators funded by the NIH submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance for publication no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Articles collected under the NIH Public Access Policy are archived in PubMed Central and linked to related scientific information contained in other NIH databases….

University of Ottawa launches open access program

December 8, 2009

The University of Ottawa is the first Canadian university to adopt a comprehensive open access program that supports free and unrestricted access to scholarly research.

The University's new program includes:

• a commitment to make the University's scholarly publications available online at no charge through the University's repository, uO Research;

• an author fund to help researchers defray open access fees charged by publishers;

• a fund to support the creation of digital educational materials organized as courses and available to everyone online at no charge ;

• support for the University of Ottawa Press's commitment to publishing a collection of open access books; and

• a research grant to support further research on the open access movement.

The University of Ottawa also becomes the first Canadian university to join the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE),

School of Environmental Sciences – U of Guelph establishes OA Policy

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The School of Environmental Sciences has taken a leadership role in promoting Open Access on campus by establishing a policy for their researchers. See the Policy Statement below and visit their collections in the Atrium.

Policy Statement
Researchers in the School of Environmental Sciences commit to making the best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works. They will endeavour to secure the right to self-archive their published materials, and will deposit these works in the Atrium.

The School of Environmental Sciences grants the University of Guelph Library the non-exclusive right to make their scholarly publications accessible through self-archiving in the Atrium institutional repository subject to copyright restrictions.

For more

Law Bytes: Canadian universities closed-minded on open access

Michael Geist | The Star.com | October 19, 2009

This week is International Open Access Week with universities around the world taking stock of the emergence of open access as a critical part of research and innovation. The basic principle behind open access is to facilitate public access to research, particularly research funded by taxpayers. This can be achieved by publishing in an open access journal or by simply posting a copy of the research online.

In recent years, many countries have implemented legislative mandates that require researchers who accept public grants to make their published research results freely available online within a reasonable time period. While Canada has lagged, a growing number of funding agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society and Genome Canada have adopted open access policies.