Du libre accès à la science ouverte : vingt ans d’actions à l’IRD - Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)

Google English: "Open access to open science: Twenty years of action at the  L'Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)

The word to ... - N ° 22 - Marie-Lise Sabrié, Director of the IRD's Scientific and Technological Culture Mission, who presents the current evolutions in favor of open access to scientific publications, Open Access, and its implications for the Institute.

A strong movement is emerging today in favor of free access to scientific publications. What about the IRD?

Marie-Lise Sabrié: In terms of open access to scientific publications, the IRD was a pioneer. Its Scientific and Technical Information Department, which is headed by Pascal Aventurier and his assistant Francine Delmas, has been involved in this process since 1986 with the creation of the Horizon plein Textes database, which references the publications of IRD researchers and by launching in 1996 a policy of digitizing these publications so that they can be accessible in pdf format on the Internet.

In 2003, the IRD was one of the first European research institutes signatory to the Berlin Declaration, which defined the principle of open access to scientific documents in response to the closed and expensive system of major publishers of scientific journals.

More recently, the IRD has signed the Jussieu Call for Open Science in favor of a diversified and open access mode of publication. In addition, the Institute is a member of Couperin, the consortium of academic and research institutions for access to digital publications. It calls for the reform of the European Copyright Directive in the Digital Single Market to take better account of the specificities of scientific publication and to ensure that open access is compatible with the principles of intellectual property.

The IRD 2016-2020 Performance and Performance Contract has set a 25% increase in the rate of open access publications in Horizon by 2020. Building on this commitment, the IRD is part of the in line with recent national and European directives that create a favorable framework for open access to publications.

In France, the law For the Digital Republic of 2016 allows the filing of an article in an open archive with a very short embargo. The European Union, for its part, requires open access for research publications funded by the Horizon 2020 program.

What are the challenges for research in developing countries?

M.-LS: Free access is a very important issue for IRD and its partners, especially in developing countries: our partners in the South must have the means to access the publications of world science and publish in international journals.

However, the financial conditions negotiated with publishers in the North are a brake. Access to information usually comes through subscriptions to journals, most of which follow a market logic with costs rising from year to year.

To this has recently been added the "pay for publish" model which imposes fees for the publication of open access articles, paid directly by the authors or their institution. These fees may in some cases exceed 4,000 euros per item, the average being around 2,000 euros. Currently, renewals of contracts with publishers are the subject of difficult negotiations led by the Couperin consortium, which could lead to breaks in subscriptions...."