Proposal for Swedish National Guidelines for Open Access to Scientific Information
Summary
The Swedish Research Council has been tasked by the Government to produce national guidelines for open access to scientific information. The proposal for guidelines was produced in collaboration and consultation with the National Library of Sweden. The Council also held information and dialogue meetings with representatives of various groups of interested parties. The views that emerged during these meetings were taken into account in the work on producing the proposal for national guidelines. During the autumn, the Council also invited people in to an open Web forum at vr.se where those who wished were given the opportunity to express their views on the proposal. Many of the views expressed in the Web forum were utilized in the final revision of the draft.
The basic principles in the proposed national guidelines are that
– scientific publications and artistic works, as well as
– research data forming the basis for scientific publications,
resulting from publicly funded research must be openly available. In both cases, proposals for time frames for the implementation are indicated.
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NATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR OPEN ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS AND ARTISTIC WORKS
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NATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH DATA
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About the recommendations for open access to research data
The proposed guidelines are based on the existing Swedish legal framework and the following laws, among others, are relevant: The Freedom of the Press Act15, Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act16 (OSL), the Personal Data Act17 (PUL), Law on Ethical Review of Research18 and the Archives Act19. References to these
are found throughout the document but they are not described in detail here. It should be noted, however, that as a rule research data is to be regarded as a public document since it is stored or was produced at a public authority, which has consequences for the guidelines. First, public documents belong to the public authority and research data is consequently not the property of the individual researcher but of the higher education institution (which normally is a public authority) where the researchers is employed. Second, everyone who wishes to has the opportunity to request public documents from an authority, which means that we already have a passive form of open access. Research data that includes personal information is protected, however, by legislation regarding secrecy and integrity and any disclosure of such research data may only take place after special review. Third, the higher education institutions are responsible for archiving and long-term preservation of research data produced by researchers employed by them.
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Strategic objective
The Swedish Research Council proposes that the Swedish strategic objective is that all research data produced either wholly or partly with public funding (the two inner rings in figure 1) is to be made openly accessible as soon as possible. Consequently, the strategic objective encompasses research data that emerges as a result of publicly-funded research.
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