OA policies and their "weight"

[Ramon B. Rodriguez]

Good afternoon everybody,
 
Following the ongoing discussion in which the CSIC (Spanish National
Research Council) and its open access efforts have been mentioned, we would
like to clarify the following:
 
The CSIC Presidency signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access in January
2006, and as a result of it the Spanish National Research Council is driving
and implementing open access principles through 2 institutional initiatives:

-Digital.CSIC (https://digital.csic.es/) is the institutional repository
that provides open access to, organises and preserves the scientific output
resulting from the research activities by CSIC 147 institutes and centers.
The repository is a project by CSIC Libraries Coordination Unit.

-Revistas-CSIC (http://revistas.csic.es/) provides open access to the 35
scientific Journals published by the institution, covering a wide variety of
scientific disciplines. To date, 14 Journals provide immediate open access,
while 22 apply an embargo period of six months. Before the end of this year,
at least 4 more Journals are planned to move to full OA. Revistas-CSIC is a
project run by the CSIC Publication Department, and is a member of OASPA
under the category of OA Professional Publishing Organization.

These 2 initiatives fall within the CSIC Vice-presidency of Organization and
Institutional Relations.

To date, CSIC does not have an open access institutional mandate. In the
absence of a nation-wide open access related law yet, there are regional
laws in favour of open access that have a direct effect on CSIC, such as
that of the Government of the Community of Madrid.

Thus, MELIBEA should not be considered a CSIC institutional project.

Best wishes,

Agnès Ponsati, Director of CSIC Libraries Coordination Unit 

Ramón B. Rodríguez, Coordinator of Revistas-CSIC