1. OPEN ACCESS POLICY
SANDRINE BROGNAUX, PHD (AVRE – UMONS)

2. 1. Foreword
 One F.R.S-FNRS mission is to promote the valorisation of scientific research
outputs
 F.R.S.-FNRS decided to join the open access movement initiated by the
« Budapest Open Access initiative » (BOAI, 2002)
read/download/copy/distribute/print/search/link/crawl/use (©)
 Board of trustees on 2012 7th December
OPEN ACCESS GREEN ROAD
 « Regulation on the application of the open access policy to scientific publications
resulting from research programs supported by F.R.S.-FNRS and its associated
funds »
(April, 2013)
 FAQ online (http://www.fnrs.be/en/index.php/open-access-en)

3. 2. What does the policy say?
 Green open access: self-archiving full-text version of a scientific paper published
in a journal, available in open access upon acceptance from the publisher, either
immediately or after the deadline imposed by the publisher.
 Institutional repositories (free)
 Submit all published research to the institution’s repositories: metadata + PDF
(post-print or published version)
 Accessibility of the PDF should be as large as possible
 In accordance with rules of copyright and embargo (depending on editor’s policies)

4. 3. To whom does it apply?
 Grant recipients and promoters (CDR, PDR, EQP, MIS) of the F.R.S./FNRS and
associated funds
 Any peer-reviewed article and publication (exception: books or monographs)
 (Partly)-funded by FNRS research
 From 1st October 2013
 Retro-active : any research result published since 2008
 ONLY FULL-VERSION OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS IN PDF
FORMAT (AND EXCEPTIONS) WILL BE ACCOUNTED FOR EVALUATION BY
F.R.S.-FNRS AND ASSOCIATED FUNDS

5. 4. Are there exceptions?
 Editor’s policies:
 Freedom of choice of researchers but preference for journals indexed in DOAJ
 Check on SHERPA-ROMEO website to find publisher’s and journal’s policies
 FNRS advises recipients to sign a licence agreement while transferring their copyright
(given template) to facilitate free access and use
 Approval of the co-authors
 Legal or ethical issues (confidentiality, personal data protections, etc.)
 IF IT CANNOT BE MADE PUBLIC, RECIPIENTS ARE REQUIRED TO
INFORM THEIR HOSTING INSTITUTION AND THE F.R.S.-FNRS
 PUT IN INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY (PUBLIC)

6. 5. What about Golden Open access ?
 F.R.S.-FNRS favors Green Open Access but no exclusion of a direct publication in
an open access journal (Golden OA)
 Golden OA: A publisher making the full-text version of a scientific paper available
in OA, either on a free-of-charge or publication-fee basis
 F.R.S.-FNRS ALLOWS ITS RESEARCHERS TO CLAIM THE COSTS OF
PUBLICATION IN OA JOURNAL TO A LIMIT OF 500€/ARTICLE

7. 6. What about other open science
aspects?
 No regulation of other open science aspects:
 Open data
 Open source
 …

8. 7. Institutional repositories

9. 7. Institutional repositories
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Open access in UMONS repository
Articles in journals Publications in conferences, symposiums, seminars

10. 8. Conclusion
 Large influence of policy papers on access to scientific research
 Still important role played by reknown journal editors that could be detrimental to
open access