Key networks & Aggregators
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).
national infra
Data repositories
National publishing initiatives
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.
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.
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.:
The Jussieu Call for Open science and bibliodiversity was launched in october 2017 and has already been signed by many major institutions.
National agreements with publishers
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.
OA books
OpenEdition books
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.