OA Mandate Adoption Challenge for Institutions and Funders

University of Southampton/EPrints is launching a week-long Open Access Mandate Adoption Challenge for OA Week.

On October 18, the first day of OA week, the results of a study were published in PLoS ONE demonstrating that the well-known higher probability of being used and cited for research that has been made OA is indeed caused by the OA itself, and not an artifact of a researcher bias toward self-selectively making research OA that already has a higher probability of being used and cited. The proof is that when OA is mandated by researchers' institutions for all research output, the mandated OA citation advantage is just as great as for self-selective OA.

Self-selective OA rates today vary (depending on the field) between 3 and 34% of yearly research output; but when mandated, total OA rates jump to 60% and rise toward 100% within a few years of mandate adoption.

The implication of these findings is that -- in order to maximize research usage, citation and impact for the benefit of the tax-paying public that funds the research -- all research institutions and funders should mandate making all their research output OA.

Representatives of universities, research institutions and research funders the world over that have adopted (or are planning to adopt) an OA mandate are invited to register their policies in ROARMAP (the Registry of Open Access Material Archiving Policies) as a show of force during OA week, setting an example to encourage other institutions and funders worldwide to do likewise.

If you know of an OA mandate -- already adopted or proposed -- that has not yet been registered in ROARMAP, please register it (or encourage a relevant official to register it).

Please register your (adopted or proposed) mandate in ROARMAP HERE

Not only will registering already-adopted mandates in ROARMAP help, but likewise registering officially proposed mandates may even help doubly: It will (1) reinforce the local institutional case for adoption of the proposal and (2) the example of the OA week adoptions and proposals will inspire many more proposals and adoptions globally. Adoptions cannot be generated within one open-access week, but proposals can be!

Progress in mandate growth during OA week will be charted by Dr. Alma Swan (a Program Advisor for OA Week) in the Open Access Information Sourcebook OASIS [reaches growth chart directly], EnablingOpenScholarship EOS [click here twice to get to growth chart] and elsewhere.