Open Access nieuwsbrief

As a result of the successful negotiations of the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU) with a dozen major publishers, any article with a corresponding author from a Dutch university can now be published in open access in thousands of peer-reviewed journals–at no costs for authors.

This may be the last edition of this newsletter with ‘open access’ in its name. We are moving towards the wider perspective of ‘open science’–of which open access to, and re-use of, research data is as much an integral part as open access to research publications.

The number of Elsevier journals in which corresponding authors of Dutch universities can publish their articles without costs increased from 140 to 266 .

On 9 February 2017 the National Plan Open Science and the website openscience.nl were presented. The main ambitions of the National Open Science Plan are to provide full open access to publications by 2020, to make research data optimally suited for re-use and to a dapt evaluation and reward systems that are in line with the objectives of open science.

The Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU) has signed a three-year deal with publisher SAGE. Authors from Dutch universities will be able to publish open access free of charge in 786 hybrid titles.

As an early career researcher taking his first steps in academic publishing, Paul Plazier considers open access as an appealing, yet complex phenomenon. He shares his thoughts on open access with us; we try to remedy Paul’s concerns.

On 15 February 2017 the UMCG hosted the symposium ‘UMCG ResearchIT tools: which, how?’ focussing on data capture to data processing, data publishing, data collaboration, data storage, data access and archiving.

“In order to get things moving, high ambitions are essential.” This is what Kees Aarts, Professor of Political Institutions and Behaviour and the new dean of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, puts forward, when asked about the ambition of 100% open access in the National Plan Open Science. Universities should not only depend upon the negotiations with publishers, but also call upon the creativity of researchers.

Since 1 January 2017, researchers of the University of Groningen (UG) and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) are required to deposit full-text versions of their peer-reviewed articles in the University’s research database.