Open Access News

The University of Minho was the first university anywhere to mandate OA to its research output. To achieve compliance, Minho has (among other things) adopted a system of financial incentives. Minho's Eloy Rodrigues describes how they work:

Following the adoption of the Minho university policy on open access, according to the second paragraph of that policy, in 2005 the Rector established a financial supplement for departments and research centers, as a reward for their implementation of the policy, and established criteria for awarding the financial supplement. The financial supplement was devised as a way to reinforce the self-archiving mandate. The reward was distributed through the research centers/departments, and not directly to the individual researchers.

To stimulate the early adoption of the self-archiving practice, the reward was distributed according to the number of documents archived in three phases: 42 % of the reward according with the number of self-archived documents till April 2005, 33% according with the number of documents archived between May and August, 25% according with the number of documents archived from September to December. In each of the phases, the total amount that each research center/department received was calculated as a function of:

1. Type of documents self-archived (peer-reviewed journal articles = 1; peer-reviewed/accepted conference papers = 0,5; other documents = 0,1);
2. Date of publication (2004 and 2005 = 1; previous to 2004 = 0,3);
3. Research Center/Department self-archiving policy. Departments that adopted a self-archiving policy based in the model of university policy (basically, self-archive and make available OA whenever is possible, restrict access or add only metadata if needed, and consider the IR as the official registry of the research output, from where all the lists should be extracted) = 1; Departments without that policy = 0,3.

The results of this policy was that, from January 1 to December 31 2005, 2.813 documents were deposited in our IR: nearly 41% and 40% were, respectively, journal articles and conference papers, and more than 19% were other type of documents (book chapters, books, working papers, etc.).

Comment. Currently, five universities or departments worldwide mandate OA to their research output. All have good compliance records, but none achieves compliance by cracking the whip. They use a wide range of kinder and gentler methods, among which the financial incentives at Minho are apparently unique. What I like about them is that they are directed to departments and research centers, not to individual faculty. They're not direct incentives to deposit eprints in the Minho OA repository; they're incentives for departments to create their own incentives or to facilitate deposits through education and assistance.