[Dspace-general] Canadian Institutes of Health Research

[Shawna Sadler]

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has just issued  this 
announcement:
Open access to health research publications: CIHR unveils new policy
http://www.irsc.gc.ca/e/34851.html

Les Institutes de recherche et santé du Canada à publié pour  diffusion 
immédiate:
Libre accès aux publications sur les recherches en santé : Les IRSC  
lancent une nouvelle politique
http://www.irsc.gc.ca/f/34851.html

Policy details in brief:

"grant recipients must make every effort to ensure that their peer- 
reviewed research articles are freely available as soon as possible  
after publication...by depositing the article in an archive, such as  
PubMed Central or an institutional repository, and/or by publishing  
results in an open access journal. A growing number of journals  already 
meet these requirements and CIHR-funded researchers are  encouraged to 
consider publishing in these journals...grant  recipients are now 
required to deposit bioinformatics, atomic, and  molecular coordinate 
data, as already required by most journals, into  the appropriate public 
database immediately upon publication of  research results.. Researchers 
are encouraged to make use of the  SHERPA RoMEO Publisher Copyright 
Policies and Self-Archiving service  to determine whether publishers 
policies are compliant with the  policy, and the policy clarifies that 
article processing fees for  open access publishing are an eligible 
expense under the Use of Grant  Funds".

Notable quotes from the Press Release:
Timely and unrestricted access to research findings is a defining  
feature of science, and is essential for advancing knowledge and  
accelerating our understanding of human health and disease," stated  Dr. 
Alan Bernstein, President of the Canadian Institutes of Health  
Research. "With the development of the internet it is now feasible to  
disseminate globally and easily the results of research that we fund.  
As a publicly-funded organization, we have a responsibility to ensure  
that new advances in health research are available to those who need  it 
and can use it - researchers world-wide, the public and policy  makers.

This open access policy will serve as a model for other funding  
agencies, said Dr. James E. Till of the Princess Margaret Hospital in  
Toronto [Chair of the Task Force that developed this policy]. The  
policy will leverage taxpayers' investment by accelerating research  and 
by fostering its broader application.

My comments on the CIHR policy as yet another example of Canadian  
Leadership in the Open Access Movement:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/09/canadian-institutes-of- 
health-research.html

The library community in Canada can be proud of our participation,  
through strong pro-open access-submissions,  in the consultation  
leading to this policy.

-- 
Shawna Sadler
Coordinator, Digital Initiatives
Libraries and Cultural Resources
University of Calgary
Phone: (403) 220-3739
Email: ssadler at ucalgary.ca