Policy on Open Access (2017) — NordForsk
ResourcesPolicy on Open Access (2017) — NordForsk
What is this about?
Policy on Open Access (2017), produced by NordForsk for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, sets out practical guidance for open science in the Nordic region. It frames openness as the default—balanced by ethics, privacy, intellectual property, and security—and promotes the principle of being “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.”
The policy requires open access to publications via clear compliance routes, Creative Commons licensing, persistent identifiers, and deposition in trusted repositories. It aligns with FAIR data principles, encouraging data management plans that address stewardship, metadata standards, and repository choice. Embargoes are limited and exceptions must be transparently justified.
Responsibilities are defined for researchers (plan for openness, acknowledge funding, retain rights), institutions (training, repositories), funders (support core infrastructure), and publishers (enable rights retention, interoperability). Compliance is monitored through reporting, metadata quality, and transparency of outputs rather than volume alone.
Equity is central: the policy promotes zero-embargo access where possible, publisher-agnostic routes, and multilingual communication. It also stresses responsible openness, safeguarding personal, health, or Indigenous data through oversight and secure environments.
Overall, the policy gathers fragmented rules into one reference, links Nordic practice to global initiatives like Plan S and EOSC, and provides actionable steps for researchers, managers, librarians, and policymakers.
