Canada’s three largest government-funding agencies have released joint guidelines effective May 1, 2015, to ensure open-access publication of the research they support.

Entitled the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, the guidelines require that all peer-reviewed publicly funded research be made freely available online within 12 months of publication.

The policy includes research supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

“We applaud the Tri-Agency for adopting these guidelines,” says University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, Gwen Bird. “They will significantly increase access to Canadian-funded research publications and data and enable Canadians and researchers worldwide to use and build on this information.

“SFU librarians already work closely with scholars to make their research available through open access, so we’re well-equipped to assist faculty, researchers and students in meeting the new policy.”

SFU researchers funded by any of the three agencies can meet the required guidelines in one of two ways:

Publish in a journal that allows open access within 12 months of initial publication.

Deposit the final, peer-reviewed author version of the article in an online open-access repository such as Summit, the SFU research repository.

The library-administered SFU Central Open Access Fund covers article-processing charges for SFU authors including faculty, staff and graduate students who publish in eligible open-access publications and do not have grant funds available to cover the fees.

The library also has memberships or invoicing arrangements with prominent open- access publishers including BioMed Central, Hindawi Publishing, Public Library of Science, SAGE Open and Springer Open. Eligible authors who submit an article to any of these publishers can arrange direct payment of their article processing charges by the library.

Open-access publications are free to read on the Internet and can be downloaded, copied and distributed as long as credit is given to the authors. Readers do not require a subscription or any form of payment, either personally or through the University or library.

Sorce: SFU News