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Friday, March 27, 2009

More on the Madrid OA mandate

The Autonomous Community Government of Madrid adopted an OA policy, apparently an OA mandate, in May 2008.  Last month it formalized the mandate in its official research regulations, February 19, 2009.

Acceso abierto a la información científica has posted the relevant excerpt, which makes clear that the new policy is a mandate.  (Thanks to Eloy Rodrigues.)  Read it in Spanish or Google's English.

The policy requires Madrid-funded researchers to deposit the final versions of their articles in their institutional repository.  It permits a delay on deposit (not just on OA) of six months for STM research and 12 months for SSH research.

Updates (3/30/09). 

  • The May 2008 policy might have been limited to certain research projects.  If so, February 2009 policy is the Madrid government's first general OA mandate.  (Thanks to Eloy Rodrigues.)  I'll post more if I learn more.
  • I was wrong to say that the new policy requires deposit in the researcher's IR.  It requires deposit in the researcher's IR and/or the Madrid central repository.  (Thanks to Gavin Baker.)
  • I believe the Madrid policy is just the second mandate anywhere to use different embargo periods for different fields.  The first was the EU-wide pilot project from August 2008.

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