# Open Access news from Norway


 [![A reviewer at the National Institutes of Healt...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/ScientificReview.jpg/202px-ScientificReview.jpg "A reviewer at the National Institutes of Healt...")](http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ScientificReview.jpg) 
:   Image via
  [Wikipedia](http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ScientificReview.jpg)

Peter Suber's [Open Access
News](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html) has recently
posted on two Norway-related Open Access developments. In both cases,
the actual policies were in Norwegian, and in PDF files. I thought I'd
try to ferret out some of the details and share them with the readers of
this blog, and of Open Access News.

The first
[announcement](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/02/norwegian-research-council-adopts-oa.html)
was that the [Norwegian Research
Council](http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Home+page/1177315753906) (who
has clearly not heard about clean URLs) has adopted an Open Access
mandate. The text of the mandate is in this
[PDF](http://www.forskningsradet.no/servlet/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition%3A&blobheadervalue1=+attachment%3B+filename%3DForskningsr%C3%A5detsOA-prinsipper.pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1233638637436&ssbinary=true). 
Here is an abridged translation of the text of the mandate:

**NRC principles for access to scholarly publishing**

***1) Goal***

Results of publicly financed research should be publicly
available.*Scholarly publishing partly or entirely funded by the
Research Council shall to the largest extent possible be openly
accessible for all those interested. To achieve this, the Research
Council will contribute to enable the potential for dissemination and
quality assurance of research results that is provided by open media and
infrastructure to be exploited to the fullest.*

*[...] During the last few years, OA has gained in currency because
certain international publishing houses have gained a monopoly position,
which has led to a strong growth in the cost of journal subscriptions.
This has put great pressure on institutional libraries. OA also covers
other important research policy needs through a) strengthening the
scholarly quality, through enabling more people to comment and build on
published research results, b) through enabling business and other
parties to easily access research results, c) through enabling
government to find out about research results, d) through storing an
unlimited amount of digital copies of articles, securing the access to
today's published research results for the future, and e) to give
researchers at institutions with lack of funding, especially in
developing countries, access to the newest research results.*

*Two main pathways: green and gold.* (Interestingly, they state that in
OA journals, publishing costs are covered in other ways than through
subscription, usually through author pays. I don't think this conforms
with the statistics we have.) *Green and gold refers to two different
business models for publishing, self-archiving is no major threat to
today's subscription based model, but can be expected to pressure the
publishers to reduce prices because articles are publicly available
after a while (usually six months). OA journals, on the other hand,
challenge the established subscription model, and can lead to structural
consequences that are had to predict today. For example the question
about how author pay should be organized and financed in a sustainable
fashion, is currently unclear.*

*OA is not limited to scientific journal articles. Anthology articles
and monographs are other examples of peer-reviewed publications that can
be seen in an OA perspective. However, journal articles constitute the
dominant form of publishing - internationally, and across disciplines.
It is therefore useful to limit the NRC's OA principles to this
publishing form.*(They don't mention history for example, where
monographs are the main vehicle, and the also don't mention that an
important reason why OA monographs might be harder, is that authors
receive some royalty. However, there is of course a growing movement of
OA monographs and university presses as well).

A discussion about encouraging deposits, and mandating it -
international experience shows that encouragement doesn't work, but
mandates do. **2*****) The NRC's demands for OA to scholarly
publishing** The social benefits connected with OA to scholarly
publishing are substantial. Therefore, the NRC will demand that
peer-reviewed scientific articles, based on research that is entirely or
partly financed by the NRC will be self-archived in appropriate
archives, where these exist. These demands for archival must not
conflict with the academic and legal rights of the authors.*

*The researchers' right to independently choose the "publishing channel"
for their own scientific results is an important aspect of academic
freedom. But researchers also carry an academic commitment to publish in
a way that allows the peer community and the greater community to get
sufficient access to these results. The principle of the individual
researchers independently choosing the channel of publications for their
research results can be challenged in two ways through the demand for
OA.*

*1) The demand for self-archiving can limit the possibility of
publishing in journals that today don't accept this.***

*Most Norwegian and international journals, however, currently accept
self-archiving. The demand for self-archiving from ever more research
institutions and funders makes it only a question of time before this
becomes common practice. In the cases where self-archiving is still not
allowed, the NRC should be able to accept an exception from the demand
to self-archive.*

*2) OA-publishing that is financed through author pays can lead to new
financial and administrative limitations.***

*It would be unfortunate if the research environments gain decision
power over who get the funding to publish, and thus are actually ble to
fund. The NRC should therefore be careful about establishing incentives
that contribute to changing fundamental publishing patterns, before
there is enough knowledge about the results of author-financed
publishing.*

*When the NRC mandates that researchers self-archive Copyright-protected
materials in institutional archives, the NRC must ensure that such
archiving does not contradict the legal rights to this material by the
author and the publisher. This is for example relevant in connection
with secondary use of published material, such as readers for use in
education. UHR and the collective rights organizations are currently
negotiating about the use of digital material at institutions. A future
agreement will probably be able to clarify the Copyright aspects of
secondary use of material from digital archives, and the NRC will
respect such an agreement and the demand it puts on
self-archiving.*(This is strange? Does not open access include that you
can create readers for free?)**

***3) Self-archiving: Infrastructure and user perspective** Scientific
articles that fit the demands in part two should be archived in an
electronic archive (repository), either at the researcher's institution,
or in a disciplinary repository. Normally a post-print version of the
article should be archived. If the author publishes in a journal that
does not allow such publishing, and has not received permission to
archive after having asked for this, the individual can be exempted from
the demand to self-archive.*

*The technical and administrative infrastructure for self-archiving is
to a large degree already present at Norwegian education and research
institutions, for example through DUO at UiO and BIBSYS' Brage-Solution.
The health sector has developed a common system (HERA), while there is
varying coverage within the independent research institutes. There are
also international subject-specific open archives within each research
area, for example the UK PubMed Central. If this is an archive that
increases the visibility of publications, or is mandated as an archival
location by other organizations, the NRC should encourage users to use
these.*

*Userfriendliness is an important facotr to ensure that researchers
self-archive without perceiving it as an extra burden. A task force
established by the Knowledge Department* ("Ministry of Education" in
Norway) *has recently submitted a proposal for a common database of
scholarly publishing within a national system for research information.
[...] The background for the research is the need to gather the research
from the health sector, tertiary institutions and independent research
institutes in one register, which will significantly simplify the work
of self-archiving. This will depend on how the report is received in the
department.*

*Such a project should also inform the researchers about their legal
rights related to Copyright, and what version of the article that they
can upload. The NRC and other institutions that mandate self-archiving,
must still be expected to provide guidance about authors' rights related
to self-archiving.*

***4) Collaboration and advice** OA is in continuous development, and
can in the long-term lead to large-scale changes in publishing patterns
and practices within research and academia. It is important that the
principles of the NRC reflect these developments, and can be adapted if
the circumstances so demand. To ensure that the principles at all times
ensure the goal of OA to scholarly publishing, the NRC will establish a
good dialogue about the principles with relevant institutions and
collaborators.*

*The NRC shall provide th government with give research policy advice.
The KD has [...] asked the NRC and UHR to provide advice about measures
that can promote self-archiving and other OA publishing. The Department
is especially interested in a consideration of whether self-archiving
should be mandated for publicly funded research, and what legal,
technological, communications, economics, administrative and other
consequences that might arise from this. The NRC's feedback to the
Department have been designed according to the principles of OA to
scholarly publishing.*

* * * * *

The second
[announcement](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/02/norwegian-universities-recommend-green.html)
is a report from a working group of the [Norwegian Association of Higher
Education Institutions](http://www.uhr.no/om_uhr/about_uhr)
(*Universitets- og høgskolerådet* or UHR) who were asked by the
[Ministry of Education and
Research](http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/kd.html?id=586)
(*Kunnskapsdepartemente* or KD) to come up with recommendations
regarding OA. The
[report](http://www.uhr.no/documents/Rapport_fra_Open_Access_arbeidsgruppe.pdf)
is 37 pages, and I have made an abridged translation of the executive
summary, as well as mentioned a few interesting tidbits from the text
itself.

**Increased access to Norwegian research results***Recommendations from
a working group established by the research committee of UHR*

(A number of reasons why OA would be good). *The UHR working group
belives that access to scientific results is an important research
policy question. A positive attitutde to the OA initiative at the KD
will have a great importance for the development within the
institutions. KD should therefore support free access in the policy
development and follow-up of universities and colleges. The KD should
encourage institutions to develop strategies and guidelines that
contribute to OA for scientific publications in their strategies for
research.*

*The long-term goal should be that all scientific articles that result
from publicly financed research should be publicly available, unless
there is a strong reason for limiting access. The short-term goal should
be that 50% of all published scientific articles are openly accessible
within 2015.*(This doesn't seem very ambitious...) *To reach this goal,
the researchers themselves must see the advantages of free access, and
be willing to employ the opportunities granted by new technology.*

*KD should prioritize supporting the further development and use of
institutional archives. This does not preclude publishing in
OA-journals. To succeed, the institutions must have a conscious idea
about quality, and what they want to achieve with their institutional
archives.*

*The work group separates between the submission itself, and the public
dissemination of the published articles. The group believes that the
institutions can demand submission of scientific publications because of
the need for oversight, testability, and institutional memory. The
submission of a published article will not automatically lead to it
being made accessible, that requires permission from the researchers.
The group believes it to be probable that most people who are asked to
do so, will give their permission, given that they have been
well-informed, the question of rights has ben taken care of, and the
infrastructure is in place.*

*Good infrastructure is about archives that are easy to use. It is a big
advantage if the full-text archive is directly connected to the research
documentation system. The institutions should facilitate administrative
follow-up in regards to submissions, clearing rights and making
submissions accessible, as well as having a communications plan that
clarify the advantages of OA. They should also encourage the researchers
to keep the rigto make their works accesible in their own archives,
disciplinary archive or institutional archive at publishing. This will
demand resources, and in the short-term the benefit will not lead to
decreased costs.*

*In addition to the work of influencing institutions, KD should
prioritize the following measures at a national level:*

-   *establish the Norvegian science index (NVI) with links to
  institutional archives*
-   *take intiative to negotiations with the publishing houses about
  national subscription and license conditions*
-   *continue NORA (Norwegian Open Research Archive), at least for the
  current year. This function should also be considered in light of
  NVI*

*The Department should also consider other measures to cover costs
related to publishing in Open Access journals.*

*To avoid these measures having unexpected consequences, the Norwegian
publishing industry should be closely followed.* **From the main text**

-   About 2% of all Norwegian publications are currently available in
  Norwegian repositories, and 47% were published in journals that
  allow this. This might be a low estimate, a technical university
  found that 91% of all publications were in journals that allow
  self-archiving.
-   A Norwegian consortium of universities spends about \$10 million USD
  per year on international journal subscriptions.
-   Much of the humanities is published in Norwegian or Nordic languages
  and in these countries, there are no publishers that have
  monopolies, and the costs are usually quite reasonable. They discuss
  ways to make the Norwegian journals open-access, either by moving to
  author-pays, or by having NRC support all running costs.
-   They say: *Many of the small, Norwegian scientific journals are to a
  large extent based on public financing. This is partly through
  direct support, but also through subscriptions that are charged to
  public budgets (universities etc, my addition), and must be seen as
  part of the public support for the journals. In addition is revenue
  from private subscriptions. At a transition to OA, whether it
  happens through author pays or through direct support, the journals
  will lose the revenue from the non-public subscribers. If  this loss
  of revenue is lower than the reduced costs of a transition to OA,
  then it will be beneficial for the public to facilitate a transition
  to OA. Such a transition would help strenghten the public discourse,
  Norwegian as an academic language, and to a certain extent Norwegian
  language and culture at foreign universities.*
-   They conclude that today's Norwegian publishing industry seems
  robust and healthy, and we have to be careful to rock the boat - we
  need more analysis of how a new system would affect the whole
  situation before proceeding.

Stian