Advancing open access in the Netherlands after 2020: from quantity to quality

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore options to further open access in the Netherlands from 2021. Its premise is that there is a need to look at the qualitative aspects of open access, alongside quantitative ones. The article first takes stock of progress that has been made. Next, we suggest broadening the agenda by involving more types of actors and other scholarly formats (like books, chapters, proceedings, preprints and textbooks). At the same time we suggest deepening the open access agenda by including several open access dimensions: immediacy, diamond open access, open metadata, open peer review and open licences. To facilitate discussion, a framework is proposed that allows specifying these actions by the a) aspects of open access they address (what is made open access, how, when and where it is made open access, and copyright and rights retention), b) the actors that play a role (government, research institutions, funders) and c) the various levels at which these actions can be taken: state as goal, set as policy, legalize and promote, recognize and reward, finance, support with infrastructure. A template is provided to ease the use of the framework.

Keywords

• open access
• the netherlands
• quality of open access
• policies
• universities
• funding organisations