February 14, 2014
New policy encourages Open Access publications
IST Austria signs Berlin Declaration, a “milestone” of the Open Access movement • IST Austria supports FWF initiative for unrestricted access to scientific results
IST Austria launches an Open Access policy. With this policy, IST Austria commits itself to secure the free availability of scientific knowledge for the entire scientific community and the public. Open Access, the unrestricted access to scientific publications, is an increasing trend in the world of science. Open Access makes scientific publications and other material, such as research data, freely accessible via the world-wide-web.
IST Austria’s President Thomas Henzinger emphasizes: “We support the self-archiving of scientific work and welcome publishing in Open Access publications, thereby making the results of our research available to as wide an audience as possible. At the same time, the rapidly rising costs of commercial publishing have given urgency to scientist-driven initiatives to generally move towards more Open Access. I strongly support these initiatives.”
FWF President Pascale Ehrenfreund comments: “We encourage researchers to make use of the multiple advantages of Open Access. As a funding agency financed ultimately by society, it is our clear intention to make knowledge available to the scientific world and the general public as freely as possible. I support this initiative by IST Austria and look forward to other research institutions and universities to act on this suggestion.”
Henzinger also announced that as sixth scientific institution in Austria, IST Austria will sign the Berlin Declaration on “Open Access to Scientific Knowledge” initiated by the Max Planck Society. With this milestone of the Open Access movement the signees – including governments, universities, research institutions, funding agencies, foundations, libraries, museums, archives, learned societies and professional associations – endorse the central goal: “Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the Open Access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community.”
IST Austria’s Open Access policy for scientific output complies with requirements of the European Research Council (ERC), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and other funding bodies that mandate that research output is openly available. On a specially designed subpage on its website, IST Austria informs scientists about the requirements for publishing in the institutional repository while complying with copyright issues.
IST Austria encourages researchers to publish in a suitable open access journal if possible, and to make use of subject repositories. Professors, postdocs and students at IST Austria are obliged to submit electronic copies of any scientific publication accepted for publication in a journal or conference proceedings, as well as other scientific research output (theses, monographs, book chapters, reviews, magazine articles, reports, media, etc.), to the Institute’s repository as long as there is no other sustainable Open Access version of the output available. All submitted publications will be made freely available as soon as possible, if there are no legal objections by the publishers.
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