Concepts of Openess and Open Access

4.4.1 UK Government Mandate

Free and open access to publicly-funded research offers significant social and economic benefits. The UK Government declared33, in line with its overarching commitment to transparency and open data, that it is committed to ensuring that such research should be freely accessible. In June 2012 the report from the (UK) National Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (the ‘Finch Group’) - Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications was published. In order to help the implementation of the policy, the Research Councils UK, introduced from April 2013 a new funding mechanism - a block grant to universities and eligible research organizations to cover the cost of article processing charges (APCs). However the UK government policy only includes Gold OA publishing and has come under severe criticism for this as green is often the preferred route to OA.

4.4.2 US Government Mandate

Sustained and persistent support and advocacy for open access finally made the US government to mandate open access for research out of public funds. An official statement from US Office of Science and Technology Policy34 (OSTP) declared that '“The Obama Administration agrees that citizens deserve easy access to the results of research their tax dollars have paid for.” The Administration sent a memorandum to all federal agencies with research budgets greater than $100 million instructing them to adopt a policy similar to that of the NIH that all taxpayer-funded research must become freely available within 12 months of its publication. The individual agencies have the option to change the embargo period as needed.

4.4.3 European Government Mandate

EU’s Research & Innovation funding programme (European Commission)

In July 2012, The European Commission committed35 to making open access to scientific publications “a general principle of Horizon 2020, the EU’s Research & Innovation funding programme for 2014-2020.” As of 2014, all articles created with funding from Horizon 2020 will have to be openly accessible and made available to public, either through immediate open access by the publisher (with publication charges possibly suitable for reimbursement by the European Commission); or through an open access repository no later than six months (12 months for articles in the fields of social sciences and humanities) after publication. The goal is for 60% of European publicly-funded research articles to be available under open access by 2016. In addition, the following major European research funding organizations are among those which have established Open Access mandates or recommendations:

• European Research Council 
• France: Inserm (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche medicale) –OA required from 2008 
• Germany: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
  

4.4.4 Canadian Government Mandate

The Canadian government, under the Department of Canadian Heritage, provides funding for the publishing of books, magazines, newspapers, films, music and other cultural industries. The department's mandate is to create "...national policies and programs that promote Canadian content, foster cultural participation, active citizenship and participation in Canada's civic life, and strengthen connections among Canadians. It however still does not 'require' that all research published out of government funding must be made Open access but recommends it. Canada has signed the 2013-G8 Science ministers statement that includes a statement on “Expanding Access to Scientific Research Results”. An open data pilot launched in 2011. Following this the Government of Canada’s next-generation open data portal was launched in June 2013. Open Data portal [data.gc.ca] offers government data in machine readable formats to enable citizens, the private sector, and non-government organizations to leverage it in innovative and value-added ways. The Open Data Pilot is part of the Government of Canada's commitment to open government, which is being pursued along three streams: open data, open information and open dialogue, and aims to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians.

4.4.5 Indian Government Mandate

Though there is no mandate for open access in India, there is however the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy. Important governmental councils such as Indian Council for Agriculture have announced their OA policy and implemented green OA for publications. The data policy of Government of India, ICAR policy and NROER (open educational resources ) are discussed below:

National Data Policy

The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy [NDSAP] aims to provide an enabling provision and platform for proactive and open access to the data generated by various Government of India entities. The objective of this policy is to facilitate access to Government of India owned shareable data (along with its usage information) in machine readable form through a wide area network all over the country in a periodically updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of Government of India, thereby permitting a wider accessibility and usage by public. The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy applies to all data and information created, generated, collected and archived using public funds provided by Government of India directly or through authorized agencies by various Ministries/Departments/Organizations/Agencies and Autonomous bodies.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)

ICAR is a research council under the federal government. Each ICAR institute is mandated to setup an Open Access Institutional Repository. ICAR shall setup a central harvester to harvest the metadata and full-text of all the records from all the OA repositories of the ICAR institutes for one stop access to all the agricultural knowledge generated in ICAR. Metadata and resources are licensed for use, re-use and sharing for academic and research purposes. Commercial and other reuse requires written permission. All publications viz., research articles, popular articles, monographs, catalogues, conference proceedings, success stories, case studies, annual reports, newsletters, pamphlets, brochures, bulletins, summary of the completed projects, speeches, and other grey literatures available with the institutes are to be placed under Open Access. The institutes are free to place their unpublished reports in their open access repository. The authors of the scholarly articles produced from the research conducted at the ICAR institutes have to deposit immediately the final authors version manuscripts of papers accepted for publication (pre-prints and post-prints) in the institute’s Open Access repository. Scientists and other research personnel of the ICAR working in all ICAR institutes or elsewhere are encouraged to publish their research work with publishers which allow self- archiving in Open Access Institutional Repositories.

National Repository of Open Education Resources (NROER)

NROER was launched in 2013. NROER aims to offer “resources for all school subjects and grades in multiple languages. The resources are available in the form of concept maps, videos, audio clips, talking books, multimedia, learning objects, photographs, diagrams, charts, articles, and textbooks

4.4.6 Argentinian Government Mandate

The Argentine Senate unanimously passed a law establishing the institutions of the National System of Science and Technology that received funding from the National State should create institutional digital repositories using FOSS. According to the law, the open access model allows users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of scientific papers and use them for legitimate purposes related to scientific research, education management or public policy, free and without other economic, legal or techniques involving the Internet itself barriers. The Act also asks for mandatory publication of primary research data after 5 years of collection that can be used by other researchers.