Open access policy for IDRC-funded project results (2015), International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

What is this about?

The IDRC Open Access Policy (2015) sets expectations that results from IDRC-funded projects be made openly available, with openness as the default but balanced against ethics, privacy, intellectual property, and security. It requires open access to publications (preferably under Creative Commons licences), deposition in trusted repositories, FAIR-aligned data management, and clear rights retention. Responsibilities are shared: researchers must plan for openness and acknowledge funding, institutions should provide training and infrastructure, funders support core systems, and publishers ensure interoperability and author rights. While limited exceptions are allowed for sensitive or commercial data, these must be justified transparently. The policy emphasises equity, zero-embargo access where feasible, and inclusive practices such as multilingual communication, while monitoring focuses on the quality of openness metadata, reproducibility, and accessibility rather than output counts.

For whom is this important?

All stakeholders in research

Other information