Decision on OA policy Lund University

["Rabow Ingegerd" <Ingegerd.Rabow@LUB.LU.SE>]

On November 14, 2005, Lund University became the first Swedish university 
to have a policy on Open Access.

The authorized English translation follows below.

Best regards

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Ingegerd Rabow
Lund University Libraries - Head Office
Scientific Communication & Bibliometrics
Ingegerd.Rabow@lub.lu.se
www.sciecom.org
www.lub.lu.se/ncsc2006/

Access to research results from Lund University, Sweden

Background

The Internet has radically changed the practical and economical 
possibilities for the dissemination of research results. It is vital for 
Lund University to utilize these new opportunities to increase the 
visibility of research production and thereby maximize access for other 
researchers, industry, and the general public. This will also increase the 
visibility and impact of Lund University researchers. Open access to 
publications leads to more usage and greater impact for the researchers.

Many universities are working towards this goal with the support of The 
Association of Swedish Higher Education (SUHF). For Lund University, this 
implies the establishment of an infrastructure to advance and facilitate 
open access to publications by Lund University researchers. In the U21 
group, a cooperative effort in this direction has already begun.

This development means that an increasing amount of accepted doctoral 
theses will be freely available on the Internet, unless prevented by 
copyright agreements.

Finally, the goal is to increase the number of quality controlled articles 
in scientific journals, and in conference proceedings, deposited 
(parallel-published) in the University repository, together with other 
publications in the form of report series and working papers,

Even though the individual researcher owns the intellectual property 
rights to his/her material it is important that the Board of Lund 
University supports this development.

Resolution

In order to maximize the number of open access publications the Board of 
Lund University strongly recommends that:

* Researchers at Lund University, if possible, publish in journals with 
open access

* If no equivalent open access journal is available, researchers choose = 
a journal allowing parallel publishing/deposition of the article

* Transfer of copyright be avoided. As a minimum the author's right to 
parallel publishing must be retained

* Lund University work for the transition of scholarly journals to a 
publishing model, where articles either are made freely available to the 
reader directly or through parallel publishing.

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