This week is International Open Access Week with universities around the world taking stock of the emergence of open access as a critical part of research and innovation. The basic principle behind open access is to facilitate public access to research, particularly research funded by taxpayers. This can be achieved by publishing in an open access journal or by simply posting a copy of the research online.
In recent years, many countries have implemented legislative mandates that require researchers who accept public grants to make their published research results freely available online within a reasonable time period. While Canada has lagged, a growing number of funding agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society and Genome Canada have adopted open access policies.
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Canadian universities may benefit from far more public funding than their U.S. counterparts, but they have been much more reluctant to adopt open access mandates. While there are some exceptions – Athabasca University along with the library departments at York University and the University of Calgary have adopted open access policies – most have been strangely silent on the issue.
Second, Canadian university publishers have been generally hostile toward open access.
Leading university presses such as Oxford University Press and Yale University Press have experimented with open licences, but most Canadian presses have not.
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