Funding Agency Open Access Policy requirements
Canadian Tri-Agencies
As of May 1, 2015, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (the Tri-Agency) have had an Open Access Policy on Publications that requires federally funded peer-reviewed research to be freely accessible within 12 months of publication. The objective of this policy is to improve access to the results of Agency-funded research, and to increase the dissemination and exchange of research results. “Grant recipients are required to ensure that any peer-reviewed journal publications arising from Agency-supported research are freely accessible within 12 months of publication".
Note that the Tri-Agencies policy only applies to journal articles, not to other forms of publication such as books or book chapters.
Revisions to the policy are expected to be announced in early 2026.
National Institute of Health (US)
The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH-funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central.
Plan S / cOAlition S
cOalition S is an initiative launched in 2018 to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and ten principles for implementation.
Funding agencies that support Plan S are mainly based in Europe. If your work is funded by an agency that supports Plan S, you are required to make publications resulting from that funding available in open access immediately upon publication, and to publish your work with a Creative Commons license (preferably CC-BY).
The Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) have joined cOAlition S and so also require articles resulting from FRQ funding to be made available in open access immediately upon publication.
For more information about your open access options that comply with funding agencies’ policies, see our Open Access Publishing page.
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