CIHR announces "Policy on Access to Research Outputs"

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) have announced this new policy, which includes publications AND data. Basically, they have taken a gentle but significant step in opening-up the research outputs of the grant recipiants they support. It does not impact all forms of publications. Two of the most salient points:

5.1.1 Peer-reviewed Journal Publications
Grant recipients are now required to make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed publications are freely accessible through the Publisher's website (Option #1) or an online repository as soon as possible and in any event within six months of publication (Option #2)."

and

5.1.2 Publication-related Research Data
Recognizing that access to research data promotes the advancement of science and further high-quality and ethical investigation, CIHR explored current best practices and standards related to the deposition of publication-related data in openly accessible databases. As a first step, CIHR will now require grant recipients to deposit bioinformatics, atomic, and molecular coordinate data into the appropriate public database, as already required by most journals, immediately upon publication of research results (e.g., deposition of nucleic
acid sequences into GenBank). Please refer to the Annex for examples of research outputs and the corresponding publicly accessible repository or database."

Gentle but firm: "as soon as possible....in any event within six months".

Thanks to Heather Morrison.

Previous:

• Australia Talks about Research Data Archiving
• Data Archiving of Publicly Funded Research in Canada
• Stewardship of digital research data: a framework of principles and guidelines
• Geist: Open Data and Open Access
• "Sharing the fruits of science"