In April 2019, Independent Research Fund Denmark, Danish National Research Foundation and Innovation Fund Denmark adopted their joint Open Access policy. Below, you can read the policy and download templates for letters to publishers concerning the publication of research articles and Open Access.
Research advances knowledge and drives intellectual, social and economic development. The foundations consider it important to maximise the impact of research by ensuring unrestricted and cost-free digital access for everyone to publicly funded research outputs. Open Access (OA) means free and unrestricted access to research outputs in the form of publications in journals and conference proceedings. OA thus gives society access to, insight into and opportunities to make use of research findings.
The public research funding organisations in Denmark have had a joint Open Access policy since June 2012. Following the adoption of the Danish National Strategy for Open Access in June 2018, the objectives and requirements relating to OA were strengthened.
With a view to meeting and supporting the achievement of the strengthened national objectives and requirements for OA, the public research funding organisations in Denmark revised their joint policy. Through this policy, the foundations will continuously monitor and promote the implementation of the national OA strategy, including by imposing OA requirements on grant holders.
More specifically, the revised policy aims to further promote OA as the standard for scholarly publishing through Green Open Access. The objective is that all peer-reviewed research articles accepted for publication in scholarly journals should be readable and distributable without financial, technical or legal restrictions.
Under the policy, published research articles resulting from full or partial funding from the foundations must be made freely available to everyone through OA, where permitted by the journal.
Through this policy, the foundations also seek to strengthen researchers’ position with regard to copyright in their own articles in the context of scholarly publishing.
Furthermore, the foundations endorse the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, which represents a milestone in the definition of and work on OA.
The purpose of Open Science is to make research, methods and research findings publicly and digitally accessible.
Where permitted by the journal, grant holders are required to self-archive a digital version of the final, peer-reviewed research article accepted for publication in a scholarly journal. Articles resulting from full or partial funding from the foundations must be deposited in an institutional or subject-specific repository, i.e. a digital archive.
If required by the journal, self-archiving of the research article may take place after an embargo period, i.e. a period during which the article is exclusively available through the scholarly journal, of up to 6 or 12 months following publication in the journal.
The embargo periods for the specific research disciplines shall be as follows:
The final, peer-reviewed research publication that is self-archived must include all graphical and other materials prepared for the article. Research data are exempt from this requirement.
The grant recipient is responsible for ensuring that relevant publishing or copyright agreements with publishers comply with the foundations’ grant conditions concerning self-archiving. The foundations also encourage grant holders to retain copyright to the greatest extent possible.
Compliance with these grant conditions must be ensured in accordance with applicable copyright law.
The requirement for self-archiving applies exclusively to research articles and conference papers published in journals and conference proceedings with an ISSN.
The self-archiving requirement therefore does not apply to:
For grant holders, this policy means:
I. When an article is accepted for publication in a scholarly journal, the grant recipient should seek to retain the rights necessary to self-archive a version of the peer-reviewed article accepted for publication.
In accordance with the Danish National Strategy for Open Access, research institutions and university colleges are responsible for informing and assisting researchers with the practical use of the infrastructure for OA publishing, for example through clear guidelines and support from relevant staff.
The foundations encourage the use of Hybrid Open Access to be minimised as far as possible. Hybrid Open Access is also referred to as “double dipping”, where both a subscription or licence fee and an article processing charge (APC) are paid to make an article openly accessible.
It is therefore accepted that the quality of a journal may be given greater weight than the objective of publishing via OA. Accordingly, researchers are advised to publish in an Open Access journal only where there is a journal of a high and recognised quality within the relevant research field.
II. When publishing an article, the grant recipient may, following the expiry of any applicable embargo period, be required to ensure that the article is self-archived in an institutional or subject-specific repository.
In case of uncertainty regarding the specific procedure for self-archiving, the research library at the relevant institution or the operator responsible for the subject-specific digital repository should be contacted.
III. When reporting to the foundations, the grant recipient must provide information on whether the publication has been made available through Open Access in the case of research publications resulting from full or partial funding from the foundations.
If articles resulting from full or partial funding from the foundations are subsequently made available through OA after the final reporting has been completed, the foundations must be informed accordingly.
The foundations will monitor whether grant holders make their publications available through OA. The foundations will also regularly assess whether there should be consequences for grant holders who fail to make their research outputs available through OA where this is possible.
Use the templates below when communicating with the publisher of your research article. The templates include a letter to the publisher concerning Open Access and an addendum to the publishing agreement.
Letters to the publisher in Danish (pdf)
Letters to the publisher in English (pdf)
Addendum to the publishing agreement in Danish (pdf)
Addendum to the publishing agreement in English (pdf)
Title: Senior Adviser
Email: hki@ufm.dk
Phone: +45 7231 8246
