Implementing Open Access Mandates in Europe: Openaire Study on the Development of Open Access Repository Communities in Europe

Abstract

The Openaire project supports the implementation of Europe’s open access policies as outlined in the European Research Council’s Guidelines for Open Access and the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Open Access Pilot. This work highlights existing open access policies in Europe and provides an overview of publishers’ self-archiving policies. It also highlights the strategies needed to implement these policies. It provides a unique overview of national awareness of open access in 32 European countries involving all eu member states and in addition, Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Switzerland and Turkey. Moreover, it describes funder and institutional open access mandates in Europe and national strategies to introduce and implement them. An overview is provided of the repository infrastructure currently in place in European countries, including institutional and disciplinary repositories, national repository networks and national open access information portals and support networks. There are robust regional and national networks of open access advocates representing libraries and some research discipline communities. More than half of the European countries covered in this work have already established national repository infrastructures. In some of these countries, the FP7 Open Access Pilot was the catalyst for discussions about funders’ open access policies and the development of national research infrastructures (e.g. in Bulgaria, Estonia and Slovenia).