Ireland: The Transition to Open Access

"Ireland’s transition to Open Access has been iterative and substantive, with government bodies and funding agencies adopting Open Access policies over a period of several years. These policies have been developed through consensus building amongst different stakeholders and culminated in the establishment of the National Steering Committee on Open Access in 20121 . The committee had representation from all Irish funding agencies and in October 2012 it successfully formulated the ‘National Principles for Open Access Policy Statement’ which outlines a framework for Open Access in Ireland2 . The principles, which have placed Ireland in an exemplar position in Europe, consist of a green way mandate and encouragement publishing in Gold Open Access journals. The policy is supported by all Irish funders and uses existing infrastructure including the use of RIAN3 , a national portal that harvests content from Institutional Repositories of the Irish seven university libraries. The framework includes a set of common principles, general principles and other supporting statements on infrastructure, advocacy, coordination and exploiting Open Access."