The National Research Environment
About 30 percent of Norwegian research is carried out in the higher education institutions. These are mainly governmental, but there are also a number of private institutions who receive government funding. R&D is mainly funded over the ordinary budgets of the institutions, but supplementary financing is obtained for programmes and equipment, mainly from the Research Council of Norway. There has been a substantial increase in research expenditure in the higher education sector from 2001 to 2009.
About 30 percent of Norwegian research is channeled through the Research Council of Norway. The Research Council identifies strategicresearch areas, allocates research funds and evaluates research within all fields and disciplines. The Council is the principal research policy adviser to the ministries, and acts as a meeting-place and network builder for Norwegian research. The Ministry of Education and Research has the administrative responsibility for the Research Council, but practically all ministries contribute to R&D programs and institutions funded by the Council.
More than 20 percent of Norwegian research is carried out in the institute sector. The sector is diverse in terms of R&D activity, research topics and size of institutes. Norwegian research institutes serve a wide range of clients, including the civil service and the industrial sector.
Open Access and Repositories
Open Access is increasingly on the national agenda, but few researchers are participating in the debate. However, libraries and policy makers are engaged. The Ministry of Education and Research has OA on its agenda, and it will require reports on institutional OA activities in 2010 from the institutions.
All government funded universities and nearly all university colleges have an IR. Most private universities and some private university colleges have an IR, while only a few research institutes have access to an IR.
OA Journals
Currently, 19 accredited academic journals and 6 non-accredited are published OA in Norway. The 4 "old" universities (University of Oslo, University of Bergen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology og University of Tromsø) have established central OA publishing services to accommodate in-house journals and journals belonging to surrounding institutions. This results in institutional journals being more efficient in economic terms and in terms of technical quality, dissemination and services.
OA Integration
NORA – Norwegian Open Research Archives is an initiative launched by the 4 "old" universities to create a unified Norwegian OA development. Other Higher Education institutions have since joined in. NORA was financed first (2005–2007) through The Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum Authority, and then later (2008–2010) by The Ministry of Education and Research. All IR development in Norway has been coordinated by NORA and has followed NORA metadata standards and vocabularies.
NORA has also, to some extent, supported the establishing of OA publishing services, and tries to co-ordinate activities related to OA journals. NORA operates a metadata harvesting operation that will provide metadata to DRIVER and to others, in addition to a national search service for OA resources. All Norwegian OA repositories are harvested, and NORA is currently starting to harvest Norwegian OAI-PMH compliant scientific OA journals and include their metadata in NORA's services.
Contributors Contact Details
The national OA website: http://www.ub.uit.no/wiki/openaccess/index.php/Hovedside (In Norwegian, with Norway-centered content for the Norwegian HE and Research sector and general public).
E-mail list for OA in Norway: norainfo@list.uit.no This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (Open to all interested, but content is only in Norwegian. Only members may post to the list. To become a member, send an e-mail to jan.e.frantsvag@uit.no This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
Contributors Contact Details.
Jan Erik Frantsvåg, senior adviser
Phone (+47) 77 64 49 50
e-mail jan.e.frantsvag@uit.no