On February 27, 2015, an announcement was made about a harmonized policy on access to research publications by the three federal granting agencies, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
In anticipation, the Dalhousie Libraries have been working to develop resources and services to assist the Dal research community in understanding and complying with these new requirements, and is pleased to announce a new component in the Open Access Subject Guide resource. This component outlines and provides resource links to information about the Tri-Agency Policy and suggests two paths through which Dalhousie researchers will be able to comply with the open access policy.
One path, the green option, allows researchers to choose to deposit their articles in an online repository like DalSpace, which is the official repository for Dalhousie University, or to deposit their content into a subject-based disciplinary repository. The other path, the gold option, provides the researcher with the alternative of publishing their research in a journal that permits immediate open access to the article. Many of these journals charge a fee, called an author processing fee, to authors to make the article open access. This fee can be claimed as part of the application for research funding.
“The Dalhousie Libraries continue to provide advice to Dalhousie researchers related to issues around open access and will be pleased to provide support related to the Tri-Agency announcement.” noted Michael Moosberger, Associate University Librarian Research & Scholarly Communications.
For additional information about the tri-agency policy, or for additional information about the process for depositing research publications under the Tri-Agency requirements, please review the Subject Guide resource at the link provided above or contact the Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Team at: scholarly.communications@dal.ca