Tim van der Hagen shares scientific articles in open access

The most recent scientific articles from the Rectores Magnifici of Dutch universities will soon be available for free online. By doing so, the rectors aim to set a good example for all researchers in the Netherlands. The articles will be shared via the university repositories. Rector Magnificus/President Tim van der Hagen has already shared six scientific articles in the TU Delft Repository. 

This action of the rectors is in keeping with the Dutch goal to be 100% open access by 2020. Since the beginning of this year, universities are boosting this effort with the pilot “You share, we take care”, aiming to make articles available through open access six months after their original publication. That is possible because of changes made to Article 25fa of Dutch copyright law in 2015, known as the Taverne amendment. 

Leading by example 
Universities strive to make all publicly funded scientific work freely accessible. Dutch universities have already been able to make agreements with many publishers regarding open-access publication. Unfortunately, this has not been successful every time. For this reason, universities are inviting their researchers to use this new opportunity in the law that allows for open-access sharing. The rectors are hoping that many researchers will follow their initiative.

Conditions 
In the pilot “You share, we take care”, researchers are able to share their publications in open access after six months, without having to make a specific agreement with the publisher. The scientific research on which the work is based must be financed in whole or in part by Dutch public funds and the author or co-author must be employed at a Dutch institution. It must also pertain to a brief academic work, the length of a scientific article or chapter in an edited collection..