Portugal Open Access Policy Landscape

“This case study includes a brief description of the Portuguese higher education and research systems, followed by a short history of the development of Open Access policies in the country, including all aspects of implementation and supported infrastructures. It concludes listing some challenges and ongoing developments.

In Portugal, the development of a solid and mature repository infrastructure, providing a range of relevant services and supporting an active OA community, around the Scientific Open Access Repository of Portugal – RCAAP – offered a solid basis to the definition and implementation of Open Access policies within research performing institutions and research funders. The majority of Portuguese Higher Education Institutions have an institutional repository as the main access point to their scientific output, and most of them also have defined Open Access policies requiring deposit into their institutional repositories.

Currently, there are strong and effective policies in Portugal, like the mandates from Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (IPB) and University of Minho, which link repository deposition with the institutional processes of reporting and evaluation. Over the last few years, and taking advantage of the participation in EC’s funded projects, OpenAIRE, MedOANet and PASTEUR4OA projects, an effort has been made to homogenise the OA policies in Portugal and align them all with the EC recommendations.

Other factors which contributed for the success of the infrastructure and policy initiatives were the strong advocacy strategy implemented in the RCAAP context, the focus on promoting interoperability, the adoption of DRIVER Guidelines, the use of the validator to periodically verify the repository compliance, and a helpdesk service to help institutions when needed. Finally, the Open Access mandate of the major public funder launched in May this year reinforced the idea that there remains room for development and improvement of Open Access issues in Portugal.”

URL : Portugal Open Access Policy L andscape

Alternative URL : http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/sites/pasteur4oa/files/resource/Portugal%20Case%20Study.pdf

Comparative analysis of public policies in open access models in Latin America. Brazil and Argentina cases

“This article presents public policies for open access models in Argentina and Brazil, two countries that have pioneered the subject in Latin America. The methodology used is comparative documentation, whereby the legal and political frameworks of open access systems are contrasted, paying special attention to the education, science, culture and government sectors. The main conclusion is that, in spite of technological and legal difficulties, public policies provide accessible information and quality knowledge.”

URL : Comparative analysis of public policies in open access models in Latin America. Brazil and Argentina cases

doi http://doi.dx.org/10.7238/rusc.v12i1.1947

Speaking As One Supporting Open Access with Departmental…

Speaking As One: Supporting Open Access with Departmental Resolutions :

“Library faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) have engaged in promoting and advocating for open access publishing at each of our campuses as well as across the University. Inspired by the passing of a faculty senate resolution in support of the creation of an open access institutional repository and associated policies, many CUNY librarians felt the need to raise their level of commitment. In this article, the authors—four library faculty members and one faculty member from outside the library—share their experiences creating and approving open access policies in the library departments of four CUNY schools and promoting open access beyond the libraries. They offer practical advice and guidance for other librarians and faculty seeking to encourage the embrace of open access publishing in departments or other sub-institutional contexts.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss1/3/

MedOANet Guidelines for implementing open access policies for…

MedOANet Guidelines for implementing open access policies for research performing and research funding organizations :

“These Guidelines for implementing open access policies have been produced by the EC-funded project “Mediterranean Open Access Network” (www.medoanet.eu). They aim at coordinating policy-development in the six Mediterranean countries that participate in the project by providing concise and targeted guidelines for a harmonized approach towards policy development (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey). They are directed to policy-makers and policy stakeholders specifically, to Research Performing Organizations and Research Funders.

The guidelines take into consideration best practices and recent policy developments, in particular the European Commission’s Recommendation and Communication on access to and preservation of and dissemination of scientific information (2012) and the planning for Horizon 2020. They are also informed by relevant documents, policy papers, recommendations and guidelines, produced recently by organizations such as UNESCO, The League of European Research Universities, the European University Association, Science Europe, among others, as well as by surveys performed in the six countries by the project.

More specifically the guidelines:
• Present the main concepts and issues with respect to open access
• Discuss the major steps that are necessary in the process of policy development
• Present the important components of an institutional and funder policy
• Present model policies for research performing and research funding organizations
• Present best practices in policy development for research performing and research funding organizations”

URL : http://medoanet.eu/sites/www.medoanet.eu/files/documents/MED2013_GUIDELine_dp_EN_ws.pdf

Open Access Strategies in the European Research Area…

Open Access Strategies in the European Research Area :

“This report presents an overview and analysis of strategies towards open access (OA) of peer-reviewed publications in the European Research Area (ERA), Brazil, Canada, Japan and the US from the year 2000 onwards. The analysis examines strategies that aim to foster OA (e.g. researcher and institutional incentives) and discusses how OA policies are monitored and enforced. The analysis is supported by findings from the literature on the global progression of OA since 2000, and comments on themes and debates that have emerged from the movement.”

URL : http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Policies.pdf

The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open…

The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open Access Advocacy :

“This paper examines the development of the Open Access movement in scholarly communication, with particular attention to some of the rhetorical strategies and policy mechanisms used to promote it to scholars and scientists. Despite the majority of journal publishers’ acceptance of author self-archiving practices, and the minimal time commitment required by authors to successfully self-archive their work in disciplinary or institutional repositories, the majority of authors still by and large avoid participation. The paper reviews the strategies and arguments used for increasing author participation in open access, including the role of open access mandates. We recommend a service-oriented approach towards increasing participation in open access, rather than rhetoric that speculates on the benefits that open access will have on text/data mining innovation. In advocating for open access participation, we recommend focusing on its most universal and tangible purpose: increasing public open (gratis) access to the published results of publicly funded research. Researchers require strong institutional support to understand the copyright climate of open access self-archiving, user-friendly interfaces and useful metrics, such as repository usage statistics. We recommend that mandates and well-crafted and responsive author support services at universities will ultimately be required to ensure the growth of open access. We describe the mediated deposit service that was developed to support author self-archiving in Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository. By comparing the number of deposits of non-thesis materials (e.g. articles and conference presentations) that were accomplished through the staff-mediated deposit service to the number of deposits that were author-initiated, we demonstrate the relative significance of this service to the growth of the repository.”

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.84