Stevan Harnad on the CIHR Policy, from the American Scientist Open Access Forum and Open Access Archivangelism
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has just announced the official adoption of the Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate it had proposed last year.
This is the 31st Green OA Mandate adopted worldwide, but the 1st in North America. (Indeed, only one North American University - l'Universite du Québec à Montréal - has signed the Berlin Declaration.)
In all, 14 departmental and university self-archiving mandates plus 17 funder mandates have so far been adopted worldwide. In addition, 2 large multi-university mandates (Brazil and Europe) are in the proposal stage, as are 4 proposed funder mandates (two of them in the US and very big).
The UK is still substantially in the lead for OA mandates adopted, but if the pending US and European mandate proposals are adopted, OA will have prevailed unstoppably worldwide.
The next big growth area will be the sleeping giant of university Green OA mandates, fueled by both the OA movement and the Institutional Repository movement. The UK universities and the European ones are moving in concerted directions here. Time for US university provosts (who signed in support of the FRPAA Green OA mandate proposal) to go into action too!
Stay tuned
Stevan Harnad
Heather's comment: a number of organizations and individuals in Canada have signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Thanks to Jean-Claude Guédon on the Am Sci Forum for the reminder. The Canadian Library Association has signed both Budapest and Berlin, and recently adopted a strong OA policy of its own.
