Knowledge Exchange, a European partnership for enhancing services in higher education and research, has released a report on open access, Putting Down Roots: Securing the Future of Open Access Policies. The report examines the relationship between open-access policies and services in five European countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), plus the European Union. Open access has taken on an increasingly prominent role in Europe over the past decade, as more academic and research institutions–at both the national level and across countries–have adopted open-access policies. Even though these policies often differ in emphasis, the report finds them to contain several common elements, including requiring or encouraging that documents be deposited in repositories and that publishing be done via open access. The report also identifies a number of service types that facilitate the implementation of open-access policies, including abstracting and indexing, support and dissemination, repository, open-access publishing, and monitoring.
The report identifies the following areas as needing further action in the near future.
- Adopting sound governance structures–ensuring that supporting services operate efficiently and fairly, and that consistent standards are enforced by national and international governing bodies
- Ensuring the financial stability of vital services-enabling cooperation among publishers, institutions, and funders to keep key open-access providers solvent; and exploring the feasibility of an international funding and governance system for particular services
- Creating a completely-interoperable repository service for open-access-encouraging self-archiving of open-access materials through establishing central nodes and rules for interoperability
- Making the transition from individual services to a larger open-access infrastructure-communicating with the publishing industry, and creating new rules and mechanisms, to ensure that all stakeholders in open access benefit from centralized services
To read the full report, click here.