McMaster University libraries have developed a set of online tools to help researchers navigate the new Tri-Agency policy on open access, which took effect on May 1, 2015.
Researchers who receive a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are now required to make any peer-reviewed journal articles arising from this research freely accessible within 12 months of publication.
The libraries have developed a suite of online resources including an interactive tool that provides researchers with a customized guide to help them comply with this new policy and learn more about open access.
“Funding agencies and institutions around the world are increasingly adopting open access policies,” says Vivian Lewis, McMaster University Librarian. “We hope these online resources will provide researchers with the information they need to comply with the Tri-Agency’s policy and encourage them to learn more about open access, a growing trend in scholarly publishing.”
Open access is a worldwide movement to make scholarly research more freely available online for the benefit of researchers, institutions and society as a whole.
For researchers, open access can result in greater use and impact of their work, leading to wider dissemination of their findings and potentially more citations.
Institutions and funding agencies around the world are adopting open access policies that encourage researchers to make their work freely available online in an open access journal or repository.
