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OpenAIRE NOADs and the EC FP7 post-grant Gold Open Access Pilot
A first webinar on the EC Gold Open Access Pilot was delivered to OpenAIRE National Open Access Desks (NOADs) on May 19th following the release of the Pilot policy guidelines on May 7th. The main aim of this dissemination activity was to provide an update on the current state of the Pilot to the OpenAIRE node institutions across the EU that will collaborate with LIBER in further disseminating the initiative in their respective countries.
The webinar, which was hosted by EIFL, had 32 attendees from NOADs in 24 countries. This large attendance shows a strong interest for this FP7 post-grant Gold Open Access Pilot and offered opportunities for an interesting Q&A session after the Pilot presentation.
This presentation covered aspects such as a review of the main Pilot policy guidelines and its associated FAQs, a brief introduction to the way the central system for collecting and processing funding requests will work once the current testing stage is completed and the system gets released, the ongoing collaboration process with a number of institutions across Europe for the Pilot kick-off (some of which are NOADs themselves such as TU Delft or the Trinity College Dublin) and how NOADs can liaise with the Pilot coordination in order to collect further information and send in their comments or questions.
Given that NOADs will be key stakeholders for ensuring the Pilot reaches eligible researchers and projects, a special emphasis was made on the dissemination strategies that NOADs can adopt in order to achieve an effective dissemination of the initiative. Some suggestions in this regard – as listed in the slide above – cover having information about this Pilot included in general Open Access dissemination activities or identifying 'champions' in collecting funding for Open Access publications whose best practices can be shared. Specific dissemination materials for the Gold OA Pilot will shortly be shared too that will support this outreach activity.
Numerous questions were collected at Q&A time on specific eligibility criteria, on the invoicing mechanisms and on the APC-equivalent funding mechanism that the Pilot will be collecting requirements on for a possible implementation after the early 2016 policy review. A particularly interesting question arrived from the Italian NOAD, who asked what mechanisms have been devised by the Pilot to ensure that the funding distribution will be reasonably balanced across countries, given that countries where the APC-based business model implementation is somewhat consolidated at the time are in a privileged position for collecting funding from the Pilot as opposite to those where the APC-based Gold OA route is barely implemented yet.
This is of course a difficult question, given that some lack of balance in the funding distribution will probably be inevitable as a result of the dissemination and management workflows being already in place in the most advanced countries, whereas the adequate practices may still need to be implemented in the newly arrived ones. However, it's post-grant FP7 projects what the Pilot will be funding, not countries, and although the periodic reports the Pilot will be providing on how the funds are gradually being spent will include the distribution by countries where the funding requests arrived from, FP7 projects are international in nature and not easily associated with a country. This said, mechanisms the Pilot has in place to try to ensure an as balanced as possible funding distribution are for instance to provide lists of eligible FP7 projects by country to every NOAD that requests them or to team up with any NOAD for dissemination purposes where useful. On top of that, the Pilot coordination will make sure that the best practices followed by NOADs in the most advanced countries are shared across the network. This first Gold OA Pilot post is then an invitation to NOADs to watch this space for forthcoming posts describing best practices adopted by the most proactive NOADs in the network.
A second Gold OA Pilot webinar for NOADs was proposed at the end of the session once the Pilot has taken off and some preliminary data can be shared on how the funding is being distributed.
The webinar, which was hosted by EIFL, had 32 attendees from NOADs in 24 countries. This large attendance shows a strong interest for this FP7 post-grant Gold Open Access Pilot and offered opportunities for an interesting Q&A session after the Pilot presentation.
This presentation covered aspects such as a review of the main Pilot policy guidelines and its associated FAQs, a brief introduction to the way the central system for collecting and processing funding requests will work once the current testing stage is completed and the system gets released, the ongoing collaboration process with a number of institutions across Europe for the Pilot kick-off (some of which are NOADs themselves such as TU Delft or the Trinity College Dublin) and how NOADs can liaise with the Pilot coordination in order to collect further information and send in their comments or questions.
Given that NOADs will be key stakeholders for ensuring the Pilot reaches eligible researchers and projects, a special emphasis was made on the dissemination strategies that NOADs can adopt in order to achieve an effective dissemination of the initiative. Some suggestions in this regard – as listed in the slide above – cover having information about this Pilot included in general Open Access dissemination activities or identifying 'champions' in collecting funding for Open Access publications whose best practices can be shared. Specific dissemination materials for the Gold OA Pilot will shortly be shared too that will support this outreach activity.
Numerous questions were collected at Q&A time on specific eligibility criteria, on the invoicing mechanisms and on the APC-equivalent funding mechanism that the Pilot will be collecting requirements on for a possible implementation after the early 2016 policy review. A particularly interesting question arrived from the Italian NOAD, who asked what mechanisms have been devised by the Pilot to ensure that the funding distribution will be reasonably balanced across countries, given that countries where the APC-based business model implementation is somewhat consolidated at the time are in a privileged position for collecting funding from the Pilot as opposite to those where the APC-based Gold OA route is barely implemented yet.
This is of course a difficult question, given that some lack of balance in the funding distribution will probably be inevitable as a result of the dissemination and management workflows being already in place in the most advanced countries, whereas the adequate practices may still need to be implemented in the newly arrived ones. However, it's post-grant FP7 projects what the Pilot will be funding, not countries, and although the periodic reports the Pilot will be providing on how the funds are gradually being spent will include the distribution by countries where the funding requests arrived from, FP7 projects are international in nature and not easily associated with a country. This said, mechanisms the Pilot has in place to try to ensure an as balanced as possible funding distribution are for instance to provide lists of eligible FP7 projects by country to every NOAD that requests them or to team up with any NOAD for dissemination purposes where useful. On top of that, the Pilot coordination will make sure that the best practices followed by NOADs in the most advanced countries are shared across the network. This first Gold OA Pilot post is then an invitation to NOADs to watch this space for forthcoming posts describing best practices adopted by the most proactive NOADs in the network.
A second Gold OA Pilot webinar for NOADs was proposed at the end of the session once the Pilot has taken off and some preliminary data can be shared on how the funding is being distributed.
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