Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, September 13, 2007

Swedish funding for OA projects

Thanks to Tom Wilson for this English summary of a Swedish announcement on the next phase of the Open Access.se research program:

...The information is all in Swedish and my knowledge of the language amounts to little more than saying 'Hej!' - but that, plus a dictionary suggests the following.

The programme has three elements in its 2007 call for proposals:

  1. The contents of open archives in universities and university colleges. This has two elements to it: creating critical mass in the free availability of scientific publications; and, Expanding the contents of open archives with new types of material.
  2. Promoting the use of material in open archives and OA journals.
  3. Quality issues - towards determining the framework for certifying open archives in Sweden and such issues as the services to be offered, etc.

A news item on the [Kungliga Biblioteket] site notes that the KK-Stiftelsen (the Swedish Research Council) is contributing 2.5 million Swedish kroner (approx. £183,000 or $371,000) to the programme for 2008-2009.

Clearly, Sweden means business :-)

Update.  Jan Hagerlid, the Programme Co-ordinator of the OpenAccess.se, tells me that KK Stiftelsen prefers the English name, Knowledge Foundation, and adds that Tom Wilson's translation was "Brilliant for a non-native".  (Congratulations, Tom.)  He also sent along a few new details:

The support from the Knowledge Foundation to the OpenAccess.se comes with a request that 1.5 million SEK of the 2.5 million should be used to promote access to digital learning resources created within universities. So the part of the call about expanding content in Open Archives includes both research data and learning resources. Personally I think this is a logical development. You would have the whole life-cycle from research data to publications up to learning resources within the same repository, perhaps with different points of access.

The support from the Knowledge Foundation is very positive in several respects. We can raise the level of support for development efforts and it will boost the interest for the programme and the issue of Open Access in general among Swedish researchers and in business circles.