...Since its inception, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation has required that the results of Foundation-funded research be made openly and freely accessible on its web site. In October 2008, the Foundation formalized its Policy on Open Access to Research Outputs. The objective of the policy is to remove barriers to accessing Foundation-funded research that is subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals....
Individuals and teams who receive funding from the Foundation for research and related activities are required to make every effort to ensure that the results of their research are published in open access journals (freely available online) or in an online repository of published papers, within six months after initial publication.
Research funded by the Foundation after October 1, 2008, should be limited to online publication on/in:
Websites of the Foundation, co-sponsors, and administering organizations
Open access journals
Journals where the publisher may not make its content immediately openly accessible, but where the publisher agrees to archive the paper in an open access repository (for example, institutional repository or PubMed Central) within six months after initial publication.
Expenses related to disseminating research are eligible to be included as part of Foundation grant proposals. Expenses that researchers may incur related to having their submissions evaluated or published by open access or hybrid journals can be included as eligible expenses as of October 2008. The Foundation also encourages (but does not require or finance) archiving of research papers published by researchers who received grants before October 1, 2008.
The Foundation reserves the right to review individual award agreements, should the Foundation determine that a breach of this policy by the award recipient or the researcher’s administering agency has occurred.
Reasonable exception
If a research team considers that the best dissemination vehicle for particular findings is a journal that does not have open access or that does not permit access via a repository, the Foundation requests that program lead submit a publishing addendum to the publisher that reads:
“Journal acknowledges that the researcher will be entitled to deposit an electronic copy of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC), and for this manuscript to be mirrored to all PMC International sites. Manuscripts deposited with PMC (and PMC International sites) may be made freely available to the public, via the internet, within six months of the official date of final publication in the journal.”
I like the policy's equal embrace of green and gold OA. On the green side, however, the policy needlessly restricts itself by requiring grantees who do not publish in OA journals to publish in journals "where the publisher agrees to archive the paper in an open access repository". It would be enough to look for journals where the publisher agrees to allow the author or author's agent to archive the paper in an OA repository.
Also on the green side, it allows delayed deposit, as opposed to immediate deposit and delayed OA release. As a result, it may complicate compliance and enforcement by having to chase down manuscripts six months after their publication, when it would otherwise only have to flip the access switch on deposited manuscripts from closed to open.
The exception is unique and interesting. When a grantee wants to publish in a journal unwilling to allow OA on CHSRF's terms, the foundation doesn't offer a blanket opt-out for the publisher (like the loophole policies), it doesn't offer an opt-out for the author (like the Harvard policy), and it doesn't require the grantee to use an addendum or find a new publisher (like the NIH policy). Instead it requests the use of an addendum. This is a new shade of gray in the spectrum of OA policies, showing yet again that we have a limited vocabulary ("mandate", "voluntary policy") for describing the range of regulatory nudging.
Along the same lines, note that the policy doesn't flatly require green or gold OA, but merely requires grantees "to make every effort" to provide green or gold OA to their funded research.
I can't tell when CHSRF adopted its OA mandate. Today, the CHSRF home page says that "The Foundation introduces its Policy on Open Access to Research Outputs", suggesting that the policy is recent. But the policy itself says that CHSRF has mandated OA "since its inception" and that it "formalized" the policy in October 2008. (The CHSRF's inception was in 1997.) If anyone can clear up this discrepancy, please drop me a line.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
