EUA urges universities to develop clear strategies to advance open access
Universities need to do more to develop institutional policies and strategies that increase access to their peer-reviewed research results to the widest range of users, to maximise the impact and visibility of university research.
This is one of the key recommendations published by EUA’s Working Group on Open Access, which aim to raise awareness of the importance of the open access issue within the university community, both in terms of its impact upon the research process but also its financial implications for university libraries.
EUA is recommending that universities across Europe set up an ‘institutional repository’ (or take part in a shared repository) as a key first step to achieving this goal. These repositories should be established and managed according to current best practices and policies developed by universities should ensure that researchers deposit their publications in the repository on acceptance of publication. Embargoes should only apply to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit.
University policies should also take better account of copyright and the institutional intellectual property rights (IPR) management.
The recommendations were published following a meeting of the EUA Council, which took place before the opening of the EUA Spring Conference at the University of Barcelona. The working group’s recommendations are based on the core premises: the university’s role and responsibility as guardian of research knowledge as a “public good” and that the results of publicly funded research should be publicly available as soon as possible; and that quality assurance peer review processes are pre-conditions for scholarly publishing.
Please click here to read the full recommendations.
Published on: Thursday, 3 April 2008 11:40