Open Access mandate from the European Research Council

Just out in Open Access News.

OA mandate from the European Research Council

A lot of the attention (rightly so) has been placed over the last several months on OA developments in America. On 26th December, this news came through from The Alliance for Taxpayer Access.

I knew that in Europe, things had gone pretty quiet in OA development terms, that was, until just yesterday. Well done to Prof Suber for being the first to note the document uploaded just yesterday.

Prof Suber makes a number of comments such as:-

This is an exemplary policy --kudos to all involved. First and above all, it makes OA mandatory. The embargo is reasonably short and ERC clearly hopes to make it even shorter. The policy supports central and distributed (disciplinary and institutional) repositories equally. For peer-reviewed articles, it requires deposit upon publication, before the embargo runs, supporting what I call the dual deposit/release strategy or what Stevan Harnad calls immediate deposit / optional access. It makes no exception for resisting publishers and even seems to apply to the published editions of articles, not just the authors' peer-reviewed manuscripts. And it unambiguously extends the OA policy from articles to data.

-----

So on the back of the recent OA Victory in America, it is wonderful almost immediate follow on news about what's happening in Europe.

Unconfirmed, but I've heard rumours that OA Mandates are now spreading to other planets in the universe - LOL