National policy around open access to publications began with the establishment of the National Steering Committee on Open Access policy in Ireland . The Committee brought together a number of stakeholders with a view to promote awareness of open access to publications and data. The National Principles for Open Access were produced in 2012 and endorsed by most of the major educational institutions in the country. The Committee increased its membership and was renamed as the National Steering Committee on Open Access in Ireland (NORF). This forum is co-chaired by Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Health Research Board (HRB) with secretariat from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. A number of sub-committees are examining key areas of open access to publications, open data and the infrastructure that is required to deliver the open access agenda for Ireland. In 2019 NORF produced the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment,
The NORF continues its work to produce a national implementation plan to facilitate the transition to an open access environment for research.
Increasingly Funders will require open access to publications and data as a requirement of funding. Remember that depositing the material in an open access repository may fulfil this requirement. Roarmap (the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies) is a searchable listing of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that look for deposit in an open access repository. Sherpa Juliet provides a searchable database for funder mandates. Sherpa Romeo provides a searchable database of publishers’ policies on open access.
All UK based research funding councils and most Irish funding bodies have open access mandates or statements on open access in place. These include
Making research outputs freely available to all helps to disseminate the results of research quickly and contributes to the breadth and depth of scholarship. Moreover, as a new kind of university in Ireland, making our research freely available promotes the university and the researchers working within it.
This policy is based on the draft national principles, which have been produced to map the transition from publication in journals to publication on open access platforms. These principles build upon existing national and international open research policies, and, through a planning process from 2018 to 2020, will move to alignment with developing European Commission policy and the principles of Plan S. Some funders and research performing institutions may have specific requirements relating to open research, which should be observed in addition to the principles described herein. Throughout the transition, researchers will be supported in maximising the impact of their work while ensuring that they are assisted, recognised and rewarded in their practice of open research. TU Dublin endorses these principles as being good for research and the research community. This policy covers all TU Dublin researchers who are publically funded i.e. in receipt of a salary from public funds or funded by specific agencies.
Publications
1. All researchers must lodge the final draft version of their article in the institutional repository Arrow upon acceptance by a journal. Alternatively, they must lodge the published version if it is available as open access.
2. Researchers must lodge in the institutional repository Arrow book chapters, reports, conference proceedings and other formats they consider appropriate for the promotion and exposure of their work.
3. Researchers may publish where they feel is most appropriate. However, researchers should be aware of the current move to open access globally and are encouraged to use the new models for open access publishing including high quality open access publishers who do not charge open access publication fees. TU Dublin will not support the payment of open access fees to hybrid journals[1].
4. Researchers are encouraged to retain the copyright of their publications
Data
5. TU Dublin supports the data management principles in FAIR i.e. data must be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable.
6. Research data should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary. Research data may be restricted for justifiable reasons such as commercial exploitation, confidentiality, security, protection of personal data, the achievement of the project’s aim, and incompatibility with the further exploitation of the research results or other stated legitimate reasons.
7. Prior planning is essential to ensure research date is managed effectively through all stages of the research cycle. Researchers must incorporate Data Management Plans as part of their standard practice to ensure the integrity and security of their data.
8. At the very least, metadata describing the dataset must be lodged in the Arrow Data Portal.
9. Where possible datasets must be lodged in the Arrow Data Portal accompanied by readme files and any other additional information required to enable the proper evaluation and re-use of data
[1] Hybrid journals are subscription journals that have an additional charge for open access rights on an article. Typically these charges are approx. €2,500 but can be higher.
What is Plan S?
Science Europe launched Plan S on 4 September 2018. It is an initiative of cOALition S, a consortium launched by the European Research Councils and a number of major national research agencies and funders (one of which is Science Foundation Ireland). It aims to accelerate the move to open access publishing. Its key principle is that, by 2020, all research funded by public grants must be published in open access journals or platforms. Since its publication there has been a widespread consultation process and the revised implementation guidance sees the date for full implementation has extended to 2021 with support for journals with transformative agreements in place until 2024. The guidance also reflects a commitment by the funders to revise methods of research assessment along the lines of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). A review process will be in place until 2024. The European University Association welcomed this clarity on the guidelines.
The 10 principles of Plan S:
1. authors should retain copyright on their publications, which must be published under an open license such as Creative Commons;
2. the members of the coalition should establish robust criteria and requirements for compliant open access journals and platforms;
3. they should also provide incentives for the creation of compliant open access journals and platforms if they do not yet exist;
4. publication fees should be covered by the funders or universities, not individual researchers;
5. such publication fees should be standardized and capped;
6. universities, research organizations, and libraries should align their policies and strategies;
7. for books and monographs, the timeline may be extended beyond 2020;
8. open archives and repositories are acknowledged for their importance;
9. hybrid open-access journals are not compliant with the key principle;
10. Members of the coalition should monitor and sanction non-compliance.
