Forum index

May 2004

"What should governments do to actively encourage Open Access publishing and/or archiving of the research they fund?"

Peter Suber, editor of The SPARC Open Access Newsletter (see Open Access Now, 15 March 2004), has drawn up a list of steps that governments can take to encourage Open Access. The following is an edited version, and the original list is available online.

• Put an Open Access condition on government research grants, so that grantees agree to provide Open Access to the results of the funded research.
1. Give grantees a choice of ways to provide Open Access, for example via Open Archives or Open Access journals.
2. Make exceptions for classified research, patentable discoveries, and publications such as books and software.
• Permit recipients of government research grants to use grant funds to pay the processing fees charged by Open Access journals. Consider the cost of Open Access dissemination to be part of the cost of research.
1. Encourage grantees to submit their work to Open Access journals when suitable ones exist.
2. Earmark some grant funds for Open Access journal processing fees, so that grantees will not have to reduce their research funds in order to pay the fees.
• Ensure that, as a matter of law, works produced by government employees in their official capacity are in the public domain. (This is already the case in the United States.)
1. Treat government-funded works in the same way. In the U.S., the Public Access to Science Act (submitted by Congressman Martin Sabo in June 2003 - see Open Access Now, 25 August 2003) would have this effect.
2. Use copyright-holder consent, rather than the public domain, as the legal precondition for open access, and so avoid alienating the important constituencies and legislators who are friendly to both open access and copyright.
• Consider a nationally coordinated program to ensure open access to the research output of the nation. This was pioneered by The Netherlands with Project DARE. Similar initiatives (with interesting differences) are under consideration or under way in Australia, Canada, Germany, and India.
• Sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.