Canada introduced the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications in May 2015 to mandate open access to research articles funded by Canada's three major research agencies: the

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; , CRSNG) is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. NSERC directly funds university professors and students as ...

(NSERC), the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; , CRSH), often colloquially pronounced 'shirk' (), is a Canadian federal research-funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and training in the humani ...

(SSHRC) and the

Canadian Institutes of Health Research The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; ; IRSC) is a federal agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada. Comprising 13 institutes, it is the successor to the Medical Research Council of Canada. CIHR supports ...

(CIHR). CIHR has had an open access policy since 2008 and the new Tri-Agency policy is largely based on CIHR's pre-existing policy. The policy stipulates that peer-reviewed journal articles produced from funded research must be made

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

within 12 months of publication by either: *publication in an

open access journal Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

*archiving in a subject repository or

institutional repository An institutional repository (IR) is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published ...

Applicability

The policy affects Tri-Agency grants awarded on or after May 1, 2015. All funded researchers are affected except graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Only peer-reviewed journal articles are covered by the policy: other research outputs such as books or media, are not affected. Only

postprints A postprint is a digital draft of a research journal article ''after'' it has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, but ''before'' it has been typeset and formatted by the journal. Related terminology A digital draft before peer re ...

or final published articles may be archived in a subject or institutional repository; other article versions, e.g.

preprints In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset versio ...

, are not acceptable.

Compliance

Enforcement of the Tri-Agency policy has not been explicitly described. Compliance with the CIHR open access policy has been managed in conjunction with the Research Reporting Service.

References

{{reflist Open access (publishing) Academia in Canada Publishing in Canada