PASTEUR4OA
Jisc is a partner in the PASTEUR4OA project, which over the last two years has sought to promote the development and reinforcement of OA strategies and policies across Europe.
PASTEUR4OA’s core activities included:
- Supporting policy development: by creating OA policy templates and guidelines and informing policymakers about how to develop or revise OA policies;
- Promoting policy effectiveness: by examining and identifying the factors that impact on the effectiveness of OA policies;
- Developing and disseminating advocacy resources: by creating resources that inform national, funder and institutional stakeholders about OA policy development, research data, copyrights, responsible research and innovation, Open Science, OA monographs;
- Raising awareness about policy alignment: by analysing the major similarities and differences between OA policies and communicating the impact that aligned policies exert on policy effectiveness, in monitoring compliance, and in simplifying workflows.
In the specific case of the UK, PASTEUR4OA has sought to inform institutions and funders on how to develop new or revise existing OA policies (link).
In addition, priority was given to sharing information about research undertaken by PASTEUR4OA on OA policy effectiveness and (link) and in communicating that information to UK institutions and funders (link).
Moreover, a series of tailored advocacy resources were developed on topics that are relevant for UK academic support staff. In particular, briefing papers on OA and knowledge transfer, monitoring compliance, economic models, copyrights and licensing, research evaluation and impact, responsible research and innovation, article processing charges, open data, OA monographs and Open Science (link).
Ultimately, PASTEUR4OA has also undertaken research that sought to understand the extent to which existing OA policies converge or diverge. Because the UK is the European country with more OA policies in place, this research is pertinent to understand to what extent institutional and funders OA policies are aligned and what would be the benefits of further aligning such policies (link).
For example, by looking at data available on ROARMAP it is possible to observe that from a total of 113 institutional and funders OA policies are generally aligned on requirements such as locus of deposit, deposit of item, content type, and article version. However, the same OA policies tend to diverge on requirements such as date of deposit, date to make item OA, deposit waiver, maximum embargo waiver, licensing, Gold OA, and APC funding. Additionally, the majority of OA policies tend to lack information on requirements such as waiver for making item OA, research evaluation, rights holding, embargo for STEM and HASS, and waiver rights retention.
Importantly, greater alignment between OA policies requirements would significantly contribute to changing authors practices by requiring them to comply with a single and consistent set of requirements. This would also simplify academic support staff workflows and it could contribute to the development of single models and infrastructure to monitor policy compliance (link).
Green Light for Open Access
On 17-18 May PASTEUR4OA hosted the conference Green Light for Open Access (#greenlight4oa) in Amsterdam. The conference was an event officially associated with the Dutch Presidency of the European Union and included some 150 experts, funders, research institutions, publishers and policymakers.
Issues related to the Open Access policy lifecycle were discussed in the conference: policy development, implementation, compliance monitoring, services and infrastructure. The main discussions during the two-day conference emphasised issues such as what can be learned from policies that are already established, how Open Access policies can be further aligned in Europe, and what their common denominators should be.
The conference presentations, videos and photos be found on:
- PASTEUR4OA website: http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/draft-conference-program
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PASTEUR4OA
- Flick: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143264193@N02/
- Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/168310179
PASTEUR4OA Resources
As the PASTEUR4OA is coming to a close, we would like to encourage you to continue to consult PASTEUR4OA’s advocacy resources in its website (http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/resources) or in Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/collection/user-pasteur4oa). We strongly encourage you to use and share these resources among your communities.