National Open Access Desk

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 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

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.

As well as the national policies the following institutions have implemented their own policies

• Technological University of Dublin
• National University of Ireland Galway
• Maynooth University
• Trinity College Dublin
• University College Cork