Spain's Draft Science and Technology Law Mandates Open Access

[As the Conyers Bill in the US seeks to undo the good done by the NIH Public Access Policy, here is some sunnier news from Spain. It is no exaggeration that open access to health research advances research progress and saves lives, whereas the Conyers Bill seeks to protect publisher access to profits at public expense. Iberia has different priorities. Many thanks to Eloy Rodrigues and Alicia Lopez Medina for posting this information about Spain's Draft Open Access Law on the American Scientist Open Access Forum.]

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Draft of the National Law of Science in Spain includes Open Access.

A draft of the National Law of Science in Spain has been released and includes a chapter dedicated to Open Access.

Article 33 of the draft states (translated from Spanish):

1. The agents of the Spanish System of Science and Technology will promote the development of institutional or aggregated repositories to allow open access to the publications of their researchers

2. The researchers, whose research had been granted with public funds shall make publicly available a digital version of their own final draft (peer-reviewed and accepted for publication) as soon as possible, but not later than 6 months after the official date of the publication of this final draft.

3. This final version will be made publicly available in open access repositories, disciplinary or institutional.

4. The public digital version deposited in the repositories can be used in the evaluation processes by Public Administrations.

The inclusion of Open Access in this document represents an important and significant commitment in support of Open Access and repositories in Spain.

The draft document is available online from https://lcyt.fecyt.es/