Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Sunday, December 14, 2008

Norwegian agency adopts an OA mandate

Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (Nasjonalt kunnskapssenter for helsetjenesten, NoKC) adopted an Institutional Policy for Open Access to Scientific Publications, November 25, 2008. 

Unfortunately the online version of the policy is an image-scan and I don't have time to rekey an excerpt.  However, it is in English.

Here's the gist of it:  All scientific publications by NoKC research staff "must" be deposited at the time of acceptance in Helsebiblioteket's Research Archive (HeRA), the new institutional repository launched by the NoKC health library (Helsebiblioteket).  HeRA contents are also retrievable through NORA (Norwegian Open Research Archives) and OAIster, as well as Google and Yahoo.  For each deposit, HeRA will release as much as it can as soon as it can.  For example, HeRA will respect publisher embargoes, but will release OA metadata during the period when the full-text may be embargoed. 

For more details, see the HeRA guidelines, which are in English and HTML.

The NoKC is an independent agency within Norway's Directorate of Health.  Its mission is to research the quality of the Norwegian health services.

Comment.  Kudos to all involved at NoKC.  I applaud the mandatory language, the immediate deposit requirement, and the dual deposit/release strategy.

Update (12/15/08).  Also see the NoKC press release (in Norwegian).  For some reason Google won't translate this doc into English.

Update (12/18/08).  NoKC signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge on November 25.  (Thanks to Anja Lengenfelder.).

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