Coordination of work for open access to scholarly publications | Kungliga biblioteket -- National Library of Sweden

The National Library of Sweden (NLS) is tasked with reporting each year on the work taking place at the national level with open access to scholarly publications. This report focusses on analysis and assessment and builds on the interim report submitted in October 2021, which focussed on surveying developments. The interim report highlighted five priority areas: increased costs, harmonisation of principles, prerequisites under copyright law, technical conditions and the incentive structures of research.

The introduction to the analysis section provides an overview of Swedish and international stakeholders, their roles and areas of responsibility, and initiatives that have an impact on developments in Sweden. This is followed by an analysis of the costs of the transition, which highlights matters including the effects of the transformative agreements and the related issue of redistribution of costs between the participants in the Bibsam Consortium.

There is also a discussion here about the economic value of open access.

The need for harmonisation of principles and what a national policy for open science can contribute are discussed and clarified on the basis of, among other things, UNESCO’s new recommendation. The section on copyright and open access provides an account of the developments at the European level relating to different regulatory frameworks for self- archiving and shows that there may be grounds to review the corresponding regulatory framework in Sweden.

The section on digitisation of scholarly publications and the FAIR principles points to a need for development if both publications and metadata are to comply with the FAIR principles.

Only then can the benefits of digitisation be better utilised and open access to publications have the desired impact on societal development. The analysis section concludes with a discussion about the need to develop incentive and researcher assessment systems in order to ensure that open access becomes an integral part of Swedish research and that researchers who choose this type of publication are not disadvantaged.

In light of the analysis, NLS submits the following proposals:

• That a national open science policy be created.
• That the Government analyses which limitations the existing regulations place on an open science system and submits proposed regulatory changes.
• That two types of financial support are made available: in the form of assignments to the Swedish Research Council to support Swedish scholarly publications in the transition to open access and to NLS for operation and development of the technical platform Publicera
• That a coordinating information- and skills-development initiative concerning FAIR for publications be implemented.
• That NLS’s government commission to coordinate the transition to open access to scholarly publications becomes a permanent part of NLS’s assignment and be introduced into its instructions.