Draft Tri-Agency Open Access policy

"In October this year, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the Canadian institute of Health Research (CIHR) published a draft policy on Open Access for consultation. The consultation period ends in a few days, on December 13th. NSERC also has a preamble to the proposed policy. In general, the proposed policy is as progressive as those from the US NIH and NSF, the ERC, and RCUK. However, as it currently stands, the policy lacks detail on acceptable Open Access terms, unduly favours STEM publishers with a 12-month embargo period allowed on the self-archiving option, and fails to address other important aspects of the scientific record, namely research data, software and data analysis scripts. My response to the consultation is appended below ..."