New Open Access and Repositories law in Argentina

Last November 16th, 2016, the Argentine government published a law entitled “Creación de Repositorios Digitales Institucionales de Acceso Abierto”.

The law establishes that all institutions which are part of the National Science and Technology System that receive funding from the Argentine federal government must create an “institutional digital repository” that provides free and open access to all publications (including technical-scientific works, academic theses, journal articles, etc.) In addition, it will be mandatory to publish the primary research data up to 5 years after collection so that they can be used by other researchers.

With this law, Argentina aims to ensure greater equity in access to research results and scientific knowledge, as well as accelerate the process of scientific discoveries.

Argentina already has a strong national system of repositories to support this law, which are centralized through the national digital repository system based at the Ministry of Science Technology and innovation (MINCyT). This law will go a long way to strengthen and legitimatize this network as key infrastructure for research communications in the country.

The announcement of the law is available here and the full law is available here (both in Spanish).