External Open Access policies

In December 2015, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) commissioned swissuniversities to elaborate, with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation, a national strategy for Open Access to publications.

The Swiss National Strategy on Open Access was adopted on 31 January 2017.

It aims to achieve the following objective in accordance with international benchmarks: by 2024, all scholarly publication activity in Switzerland should be OA, all scholarly publications funded by public money must be freely accessible on the internet. The OA landscape will consist of a mix of OA models (Green and Gold Open Access).

The National Open Access Strategy can be found here and the action plan proposed to achieve the objectives can be downloaded here.

The National Open Access Strategy approved in spring 2017 and the Action Plan of February 2018 represent important steps in establishing Open Access in Switzerland. They aim to ensure that all publications financed with public money are openly accessible by 2024.

The SNSF has decided to implement Open Access for all publications emanating from SNSF-funded research already as of 2020.

To facilitate this policy, the SNSF has defined a range of measures and issued new regulations, which entered into force on 1 April 2018. These measures focus on the funding of Gold Open Access publication costs (for articles, books and chapters) independently from projects budgets through the introduction of a new Open Access Platform.

Nonetheless, Green Open Access is also compliant with the SNSF's Open Access mandate as long as the embargo period is no longer than 6 monts for articles, and 12 months for books and book chapters.

The SNSF DOES NOT fund hybrid Open Access, although authors are free to use that way.

The regulations on the funding of Open Access publications can be found here (FR). A shorter fact-sheet by the SNSF will be available soon. In the meantime, UNIL provides its researchers with the summary table below:

Open science is an approach based on open cooperative work and systematic sharing of knowledge and tools as early and widely as possible in the process. It has the potential to increase the quality and efficiency of research and accelerate the advancement of knowledge and innovation by sharing results, making them more reusable and improving their reproducibility. It entails the involvement of all relevant knowledge actors.

Horizon Europe moves beyond open access to open science for which it features a comprehensive policy implemented from the proposal stage to project reporting.

More information (Chapter 16)

Researcher guides - OpenAIRE

Modern research builds on extensive scientific dialogue and advances by improving earlier work. The Europe 2020 strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy underlines the central role of knowledge and innovation in generating growth. Broader access to scientific publications and data therefore helps to build on previous research results, encourage collaboration and avoid duplication of effort, speed up innovation and involve citizens and society.

This is why the EU wants to improve access to scientific information and to boost the benefits of public investment in research funded under Horizon 2020.

The Commission considers that there should be no need to pay for information funded from the public purse each time it is accessed or used. Moreover, it should benefit European businesses and the public to the full. This means making publicly-funded scientific information available online, at no extra cost, to European researchers, innovative industries and the public, while ensuring that it is preserved in the long term.

Under Horizon 2020, the legal basis for open access is laid down in the Framework Programme and its Rules for Participation. You can find the Guidelines to the Rules on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Open Access to Research Data in Horizon 2020 here.