National Policy on Open Access (2015), Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)

What is this about?

The National Policy on Open Access (2015) from Luxembourg’s National Research Fund (FNR) establishes that research funded with public money should be 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, deposited in trusted repositories with persistent identifiers and FAIR-aligned data management plans. Researchers must plan for openness early, acknowledge funding, and retain rights where possible, while institutions provide infrastructure and training, and funders support repositories rather than costly publication fees. Embargoes and exceptions are limited and must be justified transparently. The policy promotes equity by encouraging zero-embargo access, minimizing author charges, and enabling multilingual communication. Assessment focuses on the quality of openness—metadata, reproducibility, interoperability—rather than sheer output numbers. By aligning with international initiatives such as Plan S and EOSC, it offers a coherent, practical framework that connects local practice to global open science norms.

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ResearchersResearch institutionsJournal publishersPolicy makers

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