EUA this week launched the ‘Open Access checklist for universities: A practical guide on implementation’, a concise document to support universities in developing institutional policies on Open Access to research publications.

The Open Access checklist is addressed to higher education and research institutions that are developing, or planning to develop, a policy on Open Access to research publications. It is intended as a general guide in the development of institutional policies on Open Access and can be useful for different stakeholders, including the leadership, administration, librarians and researchers.

The checklist contains key information on Open Access, such as benefits, challenges and ways of implementing it, as well as strategic, practical and economic aspects that should be considered when developing Open Access policy. It also includes links to resources and highlights some of the main findings of the EUA survey on Open Access conducted in 2014.

The checklist complements and extends previous EUA work in this field. Specifically, in the context of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between EUA and the European Commission in 2012, EUA committed to encourage universities to implement Open Access policies at the institutional level and created a taskforce composed of experts representing three National Rectors’ Conferences (France, CPU; Netherlands, VSNU; and the French Community of Belgium, CRef) to monitor developments.

In September 2014, EUA published a briefing paper on Open Access to research publications, focusing on European policy developments, and later that year a survey addressed to EUA universities was conducted on the implementation of Open Access policies. The survey results highlighted a need for practical guidelines on Open Access implementation and the checklist was developed to address that concern.

Looking ahead, EUA’s work in this area will include a re-launch of the Open Access survey, foreseen for autumn 2015, in order to gather a longitudinal perspective on the development and implementation of Open Access policies in European universities. In addition, and building on the work of the taskforce, a new expert group with a broader remit is being established. The new group will focus on topics such as the ‘Science 2.0′ movement, open data and text and data mining, and will provide support to EUA in the EU-level dialogue on Open Access.

Sorce: European University Association