Survey on open access in FP7

A May 2011 survey released in 2012. "The European Commission launched in August 2008 the open access pilot in FP7....Grant beneficiaries are expected to deposit peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their projects into an online repository and make their best efforts to ensure open access to those articles within a set period of time after publication. In addition to the pilot, FP7 rules of participation also allow all projects to have open access fees eligible for reimbursement during the time of the grant agreement....In May 2011, the Commission identified the 811 projects designated at the time and sent a questionnaire to all project coordinators....The majority of respondents find it easy or very easy to have time or manpower to self-archive peer-reviewed articles and also to inform the Commission on the failure of their best efforts to ensure open access to the deposited articles....Identifying a new, satisfactory publisher is rather difficult for the majority of respondents, yet 40 % of respondents with an opinion find it easy or very easy.....Half of respondents do not know or have no opinion about which publishers to be in contact with regarding their open access publications....Respondents reported a total of 534 articles deposited or to be deposited in a repository, out of which 406 are or will be open access....Reasons given for not providing open access are firstly a publisher’s copyright agreement that does not permit deposit in a repository, followed by lack of time or resources....The majority of respondents did not know about the possibility to request full reimbursement of publication costs during the lifespan of FP7 projects...Only eight projects among all respondents reported the use of reimbursement of open access publishing so far....Three quarters of those respondents with an opinion would agree or strongly agree with an open access mandate for data in their research area...."