France has played an important role in the European open access movement, particularly in the launch of the Berlin declaration, a cooperation between the Max Planck Society and people from the CNRS. French research institutions (CNRS, INSERM in particular) played a major role in early 2000, especially with the launch of theHAL open archive in 2001.
France also set forth an important initiative regarding open access journals with the Revues.org platform founded in 1999 and specialized in Humanities and Social Sciences. It is operated by a joint service unit bringing together the CNRS, two universities (Aix-Marseille and Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse) and a grande école (EHESS). Revues.org hosts more than 465 journals, 192 of them being fully open access. Universities and grandes écoles joined the open access movement gradually and it is worth noting that some universities have been working on open access publishing (Nice with the database Revel) and Open Archives (in Toulouse for instance) since 2003. After the signature of a national agreement in 2006, aiming to foster OA, some universities and grandes écoles established an institutional open archive. As of 2017, 95 of them do have an institutional repository. Couperin also facilitates this movement through a working group focused on open access. The movement is progressively growing and for example, the Jussieu call shows a real concern of the research community on OA issues.
The ANR has a strong open access policy, fully aligned with the National Plan for Open Science launched by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in 2018. It has three main objectives:
Promote open access to publications
As part of the ANR’s contribution to the promotion and implementation of open science, and in line with the National Plan for Open Science, the funded project coordinator and partners must undertake to submit the scientific publications (full text) resulting from the research project to an open archive, either directly in HAL or via a local institutional archive, in accordance with the conditions in article 30 of the French “For a digital republic” act. In addition, the ANR recommends giving preference to publication in open access journals or books.
Contribute to open research data wherever possible
The ANR supports European and international alignment efforts on the structure of open research data, and is guided by the principle: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. The Agency draws coordinators’ attention to the importance of considering data management and sharing at the project development phase. It requires all projects funded in 2019 onwards to produce a Data Management Plan (DMP) summarising what datasets the project will produce, how they will evolve, and how they will be shared, reused and perpetuated.
In the interest of consistency, the ANR follows the recommendations of the Committee for Open Science (CoSO), which it has consulted on this matter. It uses the Science Europe DMP template, which aims to promote the international alignment of research data. The Agency has worked closely with the French Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) to ensure that its DMP template is integrated into the OPIDoR DMP tool, so that plans can be completed online: https://dmp.opidor.fr/public_templates
The template is intended for all of the ANR’s beneficiaries, in accordance with their discipline-specific requirements. The ANR must receive it within six months of the start of the scientific research work. The plan will be updated as the project progresses in accordance with the procedures set out in the grant allocation document and the ANR financial regulation.
Coordinate efforts at the national, European and international levels
At the national level The Agency works with members of the wider French research and innovation community (funding agencies, research bodies, alliances, etc.) to better define and coordinate efforts to promote open access to publications and data. The ANR is represented on the steering committee of the Committee for Open Science’s permanent secretariat.
At the European and international levels The ANR is also involved in various cross-border initiatives, where it upholds France’s position in favour of open science and bibliodiversity. It is a member of cOAlition S, which brings together several funding bodies to accelerate the transition to full and immediate access to scientific publications, and it supports the Plan S. The Agency is also a member of the French GO FAIR office.
Some institutions have open access mandates requiring authors to self-archive their papers in their institutional repository: 23 French institutions are listed in ROARmap.
The national and centralized repository HAL gathers around 20 % of the French publications. Some institutions have made the choice though to develop their own repositories.There are currently 121 open archives running in the French academic environment (listed in OpenDOAR).
On July 4 2018, Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, launched the national open science plan. The plan is centered around three key commitments:
Generalise Open Access To Publications
Structure Research Data And Make It Available Through Open Access
Be Part Of A Sustainable European And International Open Science Dynamic
The National Plan for Open Science are part of France’s international commitment, and aims at making 100% of French scientific publications in open access.
Open Access LAW
In October 2016, the French Law for a Digital Republic Act (LOI n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique) came into force. One article is of specific concern for scholarly communication, as it relates directly to open access/open data. Article 30 creates a new right for researchers where authors have the right to archive an OA copy, even if they have granted the copyright to a publisher.Details can be found here. Some national OA agreements have been signed or are being discussed with French and major global publishers (see below).
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)
A nation-wide effort, coordinated by the ABES, to mandate depositing of ETD has been made. This initiative is supported by a dissemination portal for French thesis: http://www.theses.fr/. Furthermore TEL, developed by HAL, gives access to PhD thesis via self-archiving: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/.A decree makes the submission of the electronic thesis mandatory for all institutions from 1 September 2016.
Dissemin
HAL, Dissemin and Couperin have worked together to enable Dissemin to be compatible with HAL. Dissemin detects papers behind paywalls and invites authors to upload them in an open repository in one click.
Open science national events
Every two years Couperin together with national stakeholders organise a national event on open science to advance OA policies and display best practices. Two dedicated websites gather the programmes and presentations that have been made. E.g.:
As part of a support plan for French publisher following agreements are being discussed:
EDP sciences: an OA agreement including 29 titles to support OA for French publishers. Lavoisier, John Libbey: an OA agreement is being discussed with Couperin and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. OpenEdition: an OA agreement is being discussed with Couperin and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. CAIRN: an OA is being discussed directly with the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
Springer: an OA agreement has been considered with Couperin but nothing has been decided yet.
Elsevier: the national licence contract is ending by the end of 2018. Discussions with Couperin will begin during 2018.
31 books have been made open access by library funding through an initaitive led by OpenEdition, Knowledge Unlatched and Couperin.
Couperin, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, some universities and professors have worked together to build an open access electronic textbook in History. The textbook will be available in October 2020.
Couperin publishes the results of the survey on the publication and open access practices of French researchers conducted in 2019. Thanks to its unique scope, number of respondents (approx.12,000, i.e. 10% of the scientific community) and variety of disciplines, this survey helps to shed light on the way French researchers regard current scientific communication in journals and to grasp their view...
The institutional fundraising campaign for the OpenEdition Books Select offer, conducted jointly with Knowledge Unlatched, OpenEdition and Couperin, is on the right track: 58 institutions (mainly from France but also from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, USA) have pledged for the release of a package of 30 SSH research books in French (10 new books and 20 from OpenEdition collections). In fa...
On July 4, Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, launched the national open science plan at the annual congress of the Association of European Research Library (LIBER), at the LILLIAD Learning Centre Innovation of the University of Lille. Among the actions implemented by this national plan, the obligation to disseminate articles, books and research data in open a...
On October 7th 2016, the French Law for a Digital Republic Act (LOI n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique) came into force, following a one year open review process during which the draft law could be improved by citizens. This law introduces new provisions to regulate the digital economy, online cooperative economy, data protection and access to the internet. Two ...
On the 9th and 10th of march 2015, a training session on research data took place in Lyon, at the National school for librarians. The session was chaired by Monique Joly, head of the INSA Lyon library (School of Engineering) and of Couperin’s department services and forecasting studies. Around 20 librarians gathered to learn or share their experience on research data curation. The goal of this con...
