Open Science in EuropeIreland
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 Open Research Forum (NORF)
NORF Aims
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:
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:
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.
Irish funding agencies have been very proactive about implementing Open Access policies aligned with international best practice. Some of the funding agency policies are listed below.
As well as the national policies the following institutions have implemented their own policies
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 are currently available in all Irish universities and in a number of other higher education institutions:
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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.
In July 2018, Dublin City University (DCU) announced the launch of DCU Press, Ireland's first open access university press.
National Open Research Forum (NORF)
NORF Aims
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: