Mapping OA policies: Classification and Criteria | Newsletter items

"PASTEUR4OA has recently released a report presenting the results of a policy recording and policy effectiveness exercise carried out in the framework of the project. The report is available at www.pasteur4oa.eu (Deliverable D3.1). The policy recording exercise entailed the updating and revamping of ROARMAP, the database for Open Access policies. To achieve this a search to find (and add) policies currently not registered in ROARMAP was carried out, thus increasing its comprehensiveness, a new, detailed classification scheme for policies was developed, all policies in the database were classified according to the new scheme and the new ROARMAP was re-launched with increased content and greater functionality. According to the new scheme, policies of each institution have been classified on the basis of the following criteria broadly divided into five categories: institutional particulars, dates relating to policy implementation, criteria for deposit and licensing conditions, rights holding and embargo lengths and publishing options. As a result of the exercise, more than 250 new entries have been added to the database. The total number of policies globally is now more than 650 (from around 375 listed before), and 60% of them are from Europe. Two-thirds are institutional policies and about 10% are funder policies. Over half of these policies are mandatory, requiring some action rather than simply requesting it and over 60% of these mandatory policies are European. Europe has also 2.5 times the number of Open Access policies as North America. The project measured also policy effectiveness for articles in repositories of both mandated and non-mandated institutions, comparing the amount of open access material in the repositories to the total number of articles published from these institutions. The following important points emerge, which provide evidence regarding elements that should be integral to policies to ensure effectiveness ..."