Sant Joan d’Alacant Declaration in defense of Open Access to scientific publications, by the group of editors of Spanish journals on health sciences (GERECS) | SciELO in Perspective

"Sant Joan d’Alacant Declaration in defense of Open Access to scientific publications, by the group of editors of Spanish journals on health sciences (GERECS).

The concept of Open Access (OA) not only has to do with accessibility to the scientific document, but also with restrictive reuse permissions depending on the distribution reserved rights. From this idea, numerous initiatives emerged, with or without profit, to facilitate universal access through the Internet to scientific publications.

...Taking into account all the aforementioned, aware of the future changes that the editors of the Spanish journals on health sciences will have to assume, they propose the following recommendations and requests:

• Adhere to the criteria emanating from the March 2017 meeting of the European Open Science Policy Platform.
• Encourage our institutions to support Expression of Interest OA2020 (https://oa2020.org/) and, consequently, sign its principles.
• Urge research agencies at the national level to implement scientific policies that require their researchers to deposit their publications in institutional repositories.

Taking into account the social commitment of journals in OA with the accessibility of knowledge, including citizenship, the recognition as academic/professional merit is requested for publication in open access journals that are indexed in platforms committed to excellence, such as SciELO, Redalyc or DOAJ.

Also, in line with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, 2012), the editors of health sciences journals consider it necessary to support the adoption of the following practices:

• Reduce the emphasis of the impact index, or other metrics based on indicators on the journal in which it was published, as a personal promotion tool.
• Promote new indicators related to the scientific content of the article instead of metrics on the journal in which it was published.

Sant Joan d’Alacant,Spain, November 25, 2017...."