Navigating the Revised Tri-Agency Open Access Policy: How Western Libraries Can Help
Published on October 22, 2026
The Tri-Agencies recently released a revised Open Access Policy, which will apply to all grants and Chairholder awards awarded on or after January 1, 2027. This update comes a decade after the original 2015 policy, which significantly advanced open access initiatives.
Western Libraries recognizes that keeping track of these obligations, in addition to the usual demands of academic publishing, can be daunting for any researcher. We are here to help you understand the key requirements of the policy and how our team of expert librarians can assist you. More information can also be found on the Agency’s Guidance and Frequently Asked Questions page.
How Western Libraries can help
| Key requirement | What you need to do | How we can help |
|---|---|---|
|
Article Deposit: Grant recipients must make their article immediately available through a Canadian institutional repository or trusted Canadian platform, even if the article is also published open access (OA). |
You must deposit
in a Canadian institutional repository or a trusted Canadian platform. Sharing the pre-print will not meet this requirement. |
Depositing your accepted manuscript or published OA articles in the Western University Open Repository will meet this requirement. |
|
Rights Retention: Open Licensing. Grant recipients must retain sufficient rights to make their article openly available and apply an open license, such as a Creative Commons license. |
Make sure an open license is applied to your Accepted Manuscript and/or Version of Record. The Agencies strongly encourage authors to use the least restrictive license (preferably CC-BY). | Our librarians are available to help you choose the best open license option for your work. |
|
Rights Retention: Inform the Publisher of your obligations and rights under the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy. |
During the submission phase, the corresponding author will need to inform the journal that you want to retain your rights. Make sure that you don’t sign away all your rights to the publisher. | Our librarians can answer your questions about these rights retention instructions and provide guidance. |
| Funding Metadata: Acknowledge Agency contributions in peer-reviewed research articles. | You will need to quote the funder name and funding reference number (such as the FRN or Application Number) and any applicable persistent identifiers (PIDs) (such as a grant ID or DOI that specifies the grant). | Our librarians can help you learn more about persistent identifiers. |
For further assistance, contact Western Libraries at rsclib@uwo.ca or attend one of the following information sessions:
