The CGIAR has recently announced the progress made towards its openness agenda and reports that the draft CGIAR draft Open Access policy is now in wide circulation among its Research Centres, Research programs, donors and partners.The CGIAR Open Access Policy also plots a clear timeframe for moving the process towards open access forward.The policy is influenced by DFID, the WorldBank and Wellcome Trust's policies and it relies on the open access guidelines from OECD and UNESCO.

The CGIAR roadmap adopted earlier, requires that after the current consultation the revised policy be initially sent to the Consortium Centres' senior management for review, then later to the CGIAR board for approval.

The draft policy document comes just over a year after the foundation for Open Access was laid when the CGIAR Consortium approved CGIAR Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets in March 2012.

For a full announcement read here.