Swedish Research Council Adopts Open Access Mandate

The Swedish Research Council has adopted an open access mandate. The Swedish Research Council is "a government agency that provides funding for basic research of the highest scientific quality in all disciplinary domains. Besides research funding, the agency works with strategy, analysis, and research communication."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement (translation from the Swedish by Ingegerd Rabow):

The Swedish Research Council requires free access to research results.

In order to receive research grants the Research council requires now that researchers publish their material freely accessible to all.. . .

Researchers are required to guarantee that everything published shall be freely available according to Open Access not later than six months after publication.

The Council's decision regarding Open Access has been taken in close cooperation with SUHF, the Association of Swedish Higher Education. To promote free dissemination of research results is not and isolated Swedish occurrence, The so called Berlin Declaration aiming to implement Open Access has been signed by several large, mainly European research funders.

The Open Access-mandate covers so far only refereed journal articles and conference reports, not monographs and book chapters. The mandate will be included in the new grant conditions from 2010.