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Open Access

In Europe

  • The European Commission wants open science to become "the modus operandi for all researchers". (Fact sheet: Open science in Horizon Europe).
    Horizon Europe requires immediate open access to all publications. (Open Science in Horizon Europe)
  • cOAlition S and Plan S: on September 4th, 2018, Science Europe, an organization of European national funders (which includes the European Research Council), announces the launch of Plan S, built around this main principle: "By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms." In May 2019, the start date has been delayed to January 2021.

In Switzerland

Swiss higher education institutions support open access. The Swiss National Science Foundation requires grantees to make their work open access as of 2020, either in the gold or the green road, possibly after an embargo period of 6 or 12 months. It also offers grants to cover APCs (Article-Processing Charges), to publish in gold OA journals. But it does not cover the costs of publication in "hybrid journals" (subscription journals with an OA option).

On June 1st, 2022, the SNF has announced that it is joining cOAlition S and will, on January 1st, 2023 at the earliest, implement plan S. It means that researchers funded by the SNF will have to publish their journal articles open access immediately, and there will be no possibility of a 6-month embargo anymore. It is also planning to introduce the CC BY licence as a standard feature for journal articles.

According to the Swiss National Strategy on Open Access, adopted in 2017, all publicly funded research in Switzerland should be open-access in 2024.