23 February 2010

The National Research Environment

 

Research Institutions in Sweden

There are currently 15 universities and 26 university colleges in Sweden. The majority are public institutions. They are organized on a voluntary basis under the Association of Higher Education (SUHF), which has no legal status but is acknowledged as the representative of universities and university colleges as a sector. The SUHF signed the Berlin Declaration in 2004 and has made recommendations supporting Open Access to its members.

 The business sector is the main source of R&D financing, accounting for about three-quarters of total spending. Public funds for R&D are distributed either directly to higher education institutions (HEIs), or through research councils or sectoral authorities. Research institutes account for a small share of publicly funded research compared to other nations .

Major research funders and OA mandates

The Swedish Research Council is the major research council, with a focus on basic research but also active in research information and research infrastructure. It signed the Berlin Declaration in 2005 and adopted an OA mandate in autumn 2009.

 There are a number of sectoral government research agencies. Of these, Formas - the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning - adopted an OA mandate in autumn 2009. VINNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, is the second largest government agency funding R&D and is responsible for the Swedish participation in the EU Framework Programme.

 There are also a number of public and private foundations funding R&D of which some actively promote Open Access. The Knowledge Foundation co-funds the Swedish OpenAccess.se programme.

 Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) is promoting and supporting research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It decided to implement an OA mandate starting in 2010.

 Funding from the 7th EU Framework Programme accounts for about 25 percent of the funding of the main Swedish government funding agencies. Researchers from HEIs constitute 54 percent of Swedish participation in the FP7, those from business about 25 percent. The areas that attract the largest numbers of Swedish participants are ICT and Health.

Open Access and Repositories

 

Open Access policies and mandates

During the last five years a number of very influential bodies within the Swedish research community have taken a generally positive stand on Open Access. Following the SUHF and the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Royal Academy of the Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities have also signed the Berlin Declaration. There are now three research funding agencies that have adopted OA mandates.

Open Access repositories in Sweden

The development of e-publishing within Swedish higher education started on a small scale during the 1990s and gathered momentum in 2000-2003. At present almost all universities and major university colleges have Open Access repositories. Available full-text contents include doctoral and licentiate theses, journal articles, conference papers, reports, books and book chapters. Most of this content can be found in the new SwePub search service.

 The majority of Swedish repositories are members of a consortium based on DiVA, a publishing platform developed at Uppsala University. Others have implemented open source software like Dspace or created their own publishing platforms. Today most higher education institutions (HEIs) have integrated their Open Access repositories with their publication databases. These are supposed to include metadata from all the academic publications of the institution and have been created to meet the needs of research evaluation and visibility. Most HEIs have mandates for depositing theses and many also have mandates for researchers to register publication metadata. Chalmers University of Technology and university college, Blekinge Institute of Technology have explicit Open Access mandates that also cover journal articles.

 The SUHF, and its working group for library directors, have been active in promoting Open Access among member institutions, but it has no mandate to make decisions on their behalf.

The number of Swedish Open Access journals is growing, today 25 are available in Directory of Open Access Journals.

Open Access projects and initiatives

The National Library of Sweden combines the traditional mission of a national library with that of a national research library authority. It has supported the development of repositories and promoted Open Access for a number of years.

 From 2006 to 2009 it has been coordinating and funding the OpenAccess.se programme. The strategic goal of the programme was to promote maximum accessibility and visibility of works produced by researchers, teachers and students at Swedish universities and university colleges. It represented a long-term, strategic cooperation between the national library, Swedish university libraries, SUHF, the Swedish Research Council, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Knowledge Foundation.

 The programme was evaluated favourably by international experts in 2009. It is now being transformed into a permanent programme addressing OA policy issues, development of infrastructure/user services and information to researchers. The programme has so far funded about 30 projects, details of which can be found at the programme website. Their focus has been to promote:

• the growth of the volume and diversity of material in OA repositories
• access to and use of content in OA repositories and OA journals
• publishing in OA journals and the migration of Swedish scientific journals to an OA model

Useful links

OpenAccess.se, www.openaccess.se
Open Access.se, web pages in English, http://www.kb.se/OpenAccess/Hjalptexter/English/
SwePub, search service run by the NL Sweden, http://swepub.kb.se
Epublicering.se, network for repositories initated within SUHF, http://epublicering.se/
DiVA consortium search service, http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/search.jsf
ScieCom info – Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication, http://www.sciecom.org/sciecominfo

 

Contributors Contact Details

Jan Hagerlid and Ann Tobin, National Library of Sweden

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