Pillar I: Facilitating development of institutional open access policies through the retention of intellectual property rights

Expected Outcome:

Proposals will deliver on the impact “A more open, equitable and inclusive research and innovation ecosystem”, contributing to the ERA Structural Policy “Enabling open science via sharing and re-use of data, including through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)”. Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Increased number of EU research performing organisations (RPOs) with well-developed policies on open access publications, which include clause(s) for rights retention;
• Higher share of research publications in open access across the EU and Associated Countries, especially in low-performing countries with respect to open access;
• Increase of access to and preservation of scientific information through institutional infrastructures, such as repositories.

Scope:

While the EU is making progress on its open access objectives, recent reports show that there is still significant room for improvement. There is variable progress across Member States and Associated Countries, and less growth in open access through repositories compared to open access publishing.

Rights retention[1] strategies, embedded in institutional or funder policies and requirements, have been identified as non-legislative measures with very good potential to support the uptake of open access. At the same time, such strategies empower researchers and institutions to safeguard their rights. The cOAlition S of research funders has supported the implementation of relevant policies among funding organisations to enable open access, while research institutions in some EU and Associated Countries have started to implement rights retention strategies and policies with increasing success.

Trimmed here, the full scope, expected outcomes and award criteria are on the official topic page ↗.