Objective

The work of this task force is now complete.

The Open Access landscape is evolving rapidly making it difficult for organizations to keep abreast of the changes. As a part of this landscape, a number of research institutions and consortia around the world are looking into how they can support open access through direct agreements with publishers. These agreements currently take the form of:

  • Licensing language that allows authors and/or institutions to retain rights to deposit copies of publications (“self-archive”) in open access repositories (disciplinary and/or institutional).
  • Publishers terms for access and reuse (i.e. to enable text mining, hyperlinking, copying, distribution, derived works etc.)
  • Memberships with open access publishers
  • Agreements with publishers for direct deposit into repositories (disciplinary and/or institutional)
  • Agreements with subscription-based publishers to publish with open access option (Hybrid Open Access Journals)
  • Other types of cooperative agreements for open access (i.e. SCOAP3)

This multi-stakeholder Task Force, initiated and supported by COAR, with members representing a number of different types of organizations (libraries, licensing agencies, library associations, and open access groups) with a common interest in promoting sustainable and effective practices for open access.

The purpose of the Task Force is to monitor, evaluate and promote the implementation of effective open access agreements and licenses in order to improve access to research papers globally.