OA "Request" vs. "Requirement" Policies: Canada and the Global OA Sweepstakes

"In the case of the high-profile NIH Public Access Policy, the difference between a "Request" and a "Requirement" turned out to be substantial....It is for this reason that U. Athabasca's Open Access (OA) Policy is not listed as a mandate in ROARMAP, but only as a policy. By the very same token, however, U. Ottawa's policy is not listed at all in ROARMAP, since it is merely a commitment to provide some funds to pay to publish some U. Ottawa research output in OA journals ("Gold OA"), not a mandate to provide OA to all of U. Ottawa research output ("Green OA") by self-archiving it in an OA repository, as NIH requires and U. Athabasca recommends. By this criterion, U. Concordia's is the first university-wide Green OA mandate in Canada. Canada also has 3 departmental OA mandates (Calgary, Guelph, Queens) and 8 funder mandates...."