Do authors comply when funders enforce open access to research?
« Last month, European research funders collectively called for research publications to be made free, fully and immediately; so far, 14 funders have signed up. Before that, at least 50 funders and 700 research institutions worldwide had already mandated some form of open access for the work they support. Federally funded agencies and institutions argue that taxpayers should be able to read publicly funded research, and that broader accessibility will allow researchers whose institutions do not subscribe to a particular journal to build on existing research.
However, few empirical analyses have examined whether work supported by funding agencies with such mandates actually is open access. Here, we report the first large-scale analysis of compliance, focusing on 12 selected funding agencies. (…) »
