ERC supports Open Access to academic books
The European Research Council (ERC) and the OAPEN Foundation yesterday announced their co-operation in furthering Open Access to academic books and book chapters.
With the help of an ERC grant OAPEN will develop a tailormade deposit service for ERC grantees and their publishers.
The OAPEN library provides a platform for the full-text dissemination of Open Access books from all scientific areas, particularly in social sciences and humanities. As part of the new project funded by the ERC, OAPEN will provide guidance and support to ERC grantees and their publishers to comply with ERC Open Access requirements for books. It will aggregate and allow the deposit of Open Access monographs and book chapters based on ERC-funded research, provide quality assurance and dissemination of deposited publications, and ensure their digital preservation.
“Since 2014 Open Access is not an option for new ERC grantees, it’s a legal obligation,” said Martin Stokhof, chair of the ERC’s Scientific Council Working Group on Open Access. “The agreement with OAPEN helps scientists, who benefit from our funding, make their publications freely accessible online regardless of whether they are obliged to do it by their grant agreements or they wish to follow the ERC’s strong recommendation.”
Eelco Ferwerda, director of the OAPEN Foundation, added: “We are delighted to work with the European Research Council to provide our deposit service for Open Access books. The ERC emphasises the need for Open Access to peer-reviewed monographs and edited collections, and we hope our partnership will help to accelerate the transition to Open Access for books.”
The new agreement reaffirms the ERC’s commitment to Open Access and to ensuring that the fruits of the research it funds can be freely accessed, read and used, both by scientists and by the public. Similar agreements have been already signed with key Open Access repositories in Life Sciences (Europe PubMed Central) and physical sciences and engineering (arXiv), covering most scientific domains and publication formats.
Under Horizon 2020, beneficiaries of ERC grants must deposit, in a suitable Open Access repository, the published version or final accepted manuscript of any peer-reviewed scientific publication relating to the results of their funded research. This includes peer-reviewed monographs and book chapters. Publications have to be deposited as soon as possible and at the latest upon publication. Open Access must be ensured within six months of publication; for publications in social sciences and humanities a delay of up to 12 months is acceptable.
