Ireland
Last updated on 
Mar 22, 2022

National Open Access Desk

Trinity College Library Dublin
Trinity College Library Dublin
  • Overview

    Ireland has considerable expertise in developing Open Access to publicly funded research, aligned with international policies and initiatives, and is now seeking to strengthen its approach to support international developments on Open Science led by the European Commission, Science Europe and other international agencies.

    The Irish Open Access landscape favours the ‘Green’ approach to Open Access. This was outlined in Ireland’s National Principles on Open Access which stressed the importance of depositing the correct versions of research papers in the researchers' local repositories.

    national overview

    Support and Landscape

    National OA pages and resources

    National Open Research Forum (NORF)
    NORF Aims

    • To inform the research community, and the public about open access;
    • To ensure all researchers in the country are able to make their work openly accessible, through at least one open access repository;
    • To support the evolution of a state-of-the-art and all-inclusive national open access infrastructure.

    Open Knowledge Ireland
    The Open Knowledge (OK) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content.

    Repository Network Ireland is a group of Repository managers, librarians and information professionals in Ireland.
    Aims of the RNI:

    • Improve communication
    • Share information (knowledge, skills, learning) between repository managers
    • Develop technical skills
    • Run regular workshops

    National Initiatives

    There are eight universities in Ireland: University College Dublin (UCD), University College Cork (UCC), the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), Maynooth University (MU), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, the University of Limerick, and Technical University Dublin. Additionally Ireland has 14 Institutes of Technology, including the Dublin Institute of Technology and 7 Colleges of Education. A number of other third level institutions provide specialist education in such fields as art and design, medicine, business studies, rural development, theology, music and law.

    national landscape

  • Open Science Policy

    National Policy

    Ireland’s National Principles on Open Access were published in October 2012. The principles reiterate the right of the freedom of researchers to publish wherever they feel is the most appropriate. Additionally the policy states:

    • Peer-reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research should be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an ongoing basis.
    • Every publicly-funded researcher in Ireland shall have deposit rights in an Open Access repository
    • Authors shall deposit post-prints (or the publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings.
    • All peer-reviewed journal articles and conference publications should be deposited. Other research outputs including books, book chapters, and reports should be deposited where possible.
    • The deposit should be made as soon as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance for publication, and no later than the date of formal publication.
    • Metadata shall comprise the full bibliographic and/or descriptive data and should comply with national and international standards and agreements for harvesting, reporting and interoperability.

    Ireland’s national principles also encourage researchers to publish in Open Access Journals but clearly states that these papers must also be deposited in a repository. In addition, most Irish funding agencies and some Higher Education Institutions have Open Access policies.

    In 2019, Ireland's National Open Research Forum published the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment. This framework is the first step in the process to create a National Action Plan for the transition to an open research environment in Ireland. This framework details a number of goals in the areas of enabling open access to research publications, enabling FAIR research data, developing infrastructures for access to and preservation of research, building skills and competencies, and creating incentives and rewards. A public consultation process will follow the publication of the framework and will ultimately inform a future National Action Plan.

     

    national policy

    Funder policy

    Institutional Policy

  • Infrastructure & EOSC

    Key networks & Aggregators

    RIAN is Ireland’s national portal for Open Access portals. RIAN began in 210 by harvesting the contents of the Institutional Repositories of Ireland's university libraries. As RIAN developed further, other Irish research repositories were added, and more continue to be added, with the aim of making RIAN the portal to Irish research.

    Open Access repositories

    Open Access repositories are currently available in all Irish universities and in a number of other higher education institutions:

    Institutional repositories
    GOVERNMENT AGENCY REPOSITORIES

    national infra

    Data repositories

    National publishing initiatives

    National agreements with publishers

    In January 2020, the Irish Research eLibrary (IReL) came to an agreement with Elsever, allowing participating institutions continued read-access to the Elsevier’s Freedom Collection of journals and allowing corresponding authors from member institutions to publish articles open access in over two thousand Elsevier journals without publication charges. The agreement will allow an estimated 71% of articles by eligible authors in the relevant Elsevier journals to be open access immediately on publication for each year of the agreement. The agreement will last until the end of 2022.

    IReL have also come to a one-year agreement with the Electrochemical Society, as of January 2020. This will allow corresponding authors from member institutions to publish unlimited open access in ECS journals without charge. 

    IReL is participating also in Annual Reviews’ “Subscribe to Open” initiative in 2020, which will make all articles published in the five pilot journals available on open access from 2020.

    OA books

    In July 2018, Dublin City University (DCU) announced the launch of DCU Press, Ireland's first open access university press.

  • Training & Support

    National OA pages and resources

    National Open Research Forum (NORF)
    NORF Aims

    • To inform the research community, and the public about open access;
    • To ensure all researchers in the country are able to make their work openly accessible, through at least one open access repository;
    • To support the evolution of a state-of-the-art and all-inclusive national open access infrastructure.

    Open Knowledge Ireland
    The Open Knowledge (OK) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content.

    Repository Network Ireland is a group of Repository managers, librarians and information professionals in Ireland.
    Aims of the RNI:

    • Improve communication
    • Share information (knowledge, skills, learning) between repository managers
    • Develop technical skills
    • Run regular workshops
  • Statistics

    View Statistics in the country page of Open Science Observatory

  • News

    Ireland’s Health Research Board’s Open Publishing Platform.
    18 Apr 2018

    Ireland’s Health Research Board’s Open Publishing Platform.

    On the 28th of February 2018 the Health Research Board (HRB), One of Ireland’s largest funding agencies took a large step forward for Open Science by launching an Open Research Publishing Platform.  HRB Open Research is an Open Access, Open Peer-review, Publishing Platform that accepts submissions from HRB funded researchers. How it works Open submission of an article, the editorial team does...

    RIAN OpenAIRE Day and Workshop
    6 Nov 2015

    RIAN OpenAIRE Day and Workshop

    An OpenAIRE Day and Workshop will take place in Dublin on the 27th of November 2015. This day is being sponsored by the RIAN Board and organised by the RIAN Technical & Communications Group. Who should attend? Repository Managers, Librarians, Data Managers & Funders Why you should attend? Understand funder perspectives. Learn how to comply with funder mandates for H2020 and OpenAIRE. Provi...

    Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland.
    28 Sep 2015

    Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland.

    In April of this year University College Cork (UCC) hosted a 2-day training event focusing on Open Access Data in Horizon 2020. The event was sponsored by FOSTER and organized jointly by UCC Boole Library and Repository Network Ireland. Day one was aimed at researchers and others who were interested in developing Horizon 2020 proposals. The speakers on day one were •    Martin Donne...

    Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland.
    28 Sep 2015

    Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland.

    In April of this year University College Cork (UCC) hosted a 2-day training event focusing on Open Access Data in Horizon 2020. The event was sponsored by FOSTER and organized jointly by UCC Boole Library and Repository Network Ireland. Day one was aimed at researchers and others who were interested in developing Horizon 2020 proposals. The speakers on day one were •    Martin Donnelly from the Di...

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OpenAIRE has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreements No. 777541 and 101017452 (see all).

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