Open access is the free availability of academic or scientific literature on the Internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or reference the full text of documents.

Open access publishing has some relevant advantages:

• Increases the visibility of research and its results, both nationally and internationally.
• Increases research impact, by facilitating a greater number of citations to publications.
• This greater impact also makes the institution that supports the researchers more visible.
• It guarantees the compilation and preservation of research results, especially in cases where it has been financed with public resources.

ICAC approved, in 2015, an institutional open access policy (pdf) that involves its entire scientific community to deposit scientific results in the institutional repository, ensure respect for intellectual property rights, take into account data and metadata, follow international regulations and criteria for open access repositories, and provide persistent identifiers that allow perpetual access to documents, among other measures.

Open access research data

We can consider that the data is open when we can access them open and free and, in addition, we can reuse them for a new research.

This protocol is applicable to all ICAC research staff (including associated researchers) and sets the way to deposit all research data from projects funded by public funds in the CORA (Catalan Open Research Area) repositories, or in repositories specialized in archaeology or multidisciplinary ones with international prestige.

Link to the protocol document (in Catalan): http://hdl.handle.net/2072/521684

CORA. Catalan Open Research Area

In 2021, the ICAC joined the CORA project: Research Data Repository (RDR, in its Catalan acronym), a federated and multidisciplinary data repository managed by CSUC (Consortium of University Services of Catalonia) that allows universities and CERCA centers, and other entities in Catalonia that carry out research, the publication of research data sets in FAIR mode (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) and following the guidelines of the European Open Science Cloud (EOCS).

The objectives of the CORA project are to increase the efficiency and transparency of research by rapidly disseminating data, and facilitate its reuse.

Access the resource: https://dataverse.csuc.cat/

Data management plan

The Data Management Plan (DMP) is a formal document that describes the data generated or collected throughout the life of a research project and summarizes the strategies to manage them, during its execution and also after the project has finished.

The ICAC joined the CSUC DMP tool in 2021, aiming to help researchers in the creation of data management plans for projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program, the CE European Research Council, or the Spanish National Plan, among other funding institutions.

From now on it is possible to create online data management plans following the FAIR principles by consulting the guides and real examples of DMP, doing it collaboratively, and saving considerable time and effort.

An international movement

Open Access Movement arises from the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), where the Open Access Initiative took place. In 2003 the scientific community approved the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in Sciences and Humanities (2003). Its purpose is to offer permanent, free and unrestricted access to scientific content, with the aim of promoting accessibility, visibility and the impact of research.

Institutional commitment to the movement has quickly spread and the general trend is to make free access to publicly funded scientific results become mandatory, as stated by the European Research Council, ERC (ERC Scientific Council Guidelines for Open Access, 2007).

Declaració de compromís i adhesió de l’ICAC a la Declaració de Berlín sobre l’accés obert al coneixement en ciències i humanitats

ICAC is committed to open access as an integral source of human knowledge and cultural heritage. Following its open access policy and its commitment to open institutional repositories, ICAC is one of the leading CERCA centres in the use of the Catalan gateway to research (Portal de la Recerca de Catalunya, PRC) and the institutional cooperative repository Recercat.

The Catalan gateway to research: Portal de la Recerca de Catalunya (PRC)

Since June 2018, ICAC is part of the Catalan gateway to research Portal de la Recerca de Catalunya (PRC) with a contribution of content on 93 researchers, 8 research groups, 1,511 publications and 181 research projects (latest data update, January 2020: Available here).

This gateway aims to view and disseminate all the research carried out in Catalonia in a single public platform, facilitating open access to scientific production (more information). There are currently 25 institutions (12 universities and 13 research centres) and more than 12,000 researchers participating in it.

Recercat

ICAC’s engagement in the institutional cooperative repository Recercat, promoted by the CSUC (Consortium of University Services of Catalonia), dates from 2014.  There you can consult the academic literature of the Catalan universities and research centres. Papers, thesis, conference papers, reports, working documents, and any other kind of scientific results are collected.

You can check the ICAC statistics on documents downloads and queries on the Recercat web.

Resources on Open Access

•  The Library Minute: Open Access from The Right to Research Coalition on Vimeo.
  

• Documento del CRAI de la URV con recursos sobre acceso abierto
• Do you know the licences Creative Commons?
• In 2009 Spanish CRUE aproved a motion in support of open access: Declaración de CRUE/REBIUN en apoyo al modelo de acceso abierto.