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The Pilot

Opportunities for academic publications usually arise towards the end of, or after, the project has finished. The acceptance and peer review process can also delay publication, making it difficult to ensure that the cost of gold open access publications are incurred during the funding period of the project. By making 4 million euro of funding available to cover the cost of publications arising from FP7 projects up to 2 years after the project has ended, this pilot is a first step in addressing this gap. Up to three peer-reviewed research articles per project may be funded. Other types of peer-reviewed publications, such as books, will also be considered.

The development of the pilot will be coordinated by LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries. LIBER will work closely with the European Commission, OpenAIRE, publishers, libraries, institutions and other stakeholders in order to define guidelines and workflows which will maximise the impact of this gold open access fund.

Evidence will also be gathered from the pilot and other sources in order to produce a report on the arising open access publishing landscape and to deliver a vision of what a sustainable and competitive market for open access publishing should look like. This analysis will, among other relevant aspects, look into the extent to which open access publishing has an impact on subscription expenses at institutions.

The pilot forms part of the EU-funded OpenAIRE2020 project.

The benefits

The main goals of the EC post-grant FP7 Gold Open Access Pilot are:

• to make it easier for researchers to access funding for open access publication;
• to define workflows for the processing of research outputs released via the Gold Open Access route, including guidelines for Article Processing Charge (APC) management;
• to align these with emerging national and institutional mechanisms.

Through the monitoring of these workflows, insights will be gained which will help to make these processes more efficient and increase the impact of open access funding. By aligning and matching the data collected in the Pilot to the existing data in OpenAIRE, visibility and accessibility of the publications funded by the pilot will also be ensured by encouraging simultaneous deposit in compliant repositories.

A set of FAQs have also been made available for this Gold OA Pilot. These provide further details on specific policy aspects.

More information will be released as the Pilot starts to take off, a process that will be carried out in collaboration with a number of institutions across Europe.