Open access instead of paywalls

It isn’t just the research that’s expensive, its findings are also far from free. University libraries pay hundreds of thousands of francs per year to prestigious publishers for their scientific journals. All in all, the Swiss higher education institutions paid 70 million francs for such licences in 2017. This paywall hampers the spread and application of new knowledge.

Despite the fact that a significant share of scientific publications are government-funded, it is the private publishing companies that reap the commercial benefits. For the SNSF, an absurd state of affairs to say the least. “Research results funded with public money belong to the public,” says Matthias Egger, the President of the National Research Council. All SNSF projects are therefore obliged to offer open access (OA) to the scientific articles and books produced in the scope of the project.

How do researchers meet the open access requirements? Either they publish their results in OA journals or OA books that are immediately freely accessible. This is the gold road.

Or they publish their results in a journal with a paywall first, then place them in a public database after six months. Books are subject to an embargo period of 12 months. This is the green road.

In the case of gold-road publications, the authors often contribute to the production costs. The SNSF has already been covering the costs of OA articles for some time. Since April 2018, it has also covered the costs of OA books and will start doing this also for book chapters as of October 2018. As of this date, applicants will also be able to apply for SNSF support via the online platform mySNF.

The SNSF’s new open access policy goes hand in hand with the national strategy pursued by the Swiss higher education institutions. In 2017, they decided that all publicly funded publications must be freely accessible by 2024. Open access will soon be the standard mode of publication, in Switzerland and the world over.