« Il n’y pas de raison que les scientifiques fassent une cession exclusive gratuite de leurs œuvres aux éditeurs » | CNRS

“The CNRS now asks its researchers to apply the strategy of non-assignment of copyright when submitting their articles to publishers.

What is the non-assignment policy?
Alain Schuhl:  Scientists are the owners of their works: there is no reason for them to make an exclusive free transfer of them to publishers, thus depriving themselves of the possibility of reusing their own publications. With the strategy of non-assignment of copyright, it is now possible to distribute the accepted author manuscript (AAM) in immediate open access in an open archive, in particular the AAM of an article published in a journal under subscription. This allows immediate open access to be developed without paying publication charges (also misleadingly called article processing charges or APC)….

n English, it is about “  rights retention strategy ” which has been translated into French as “strategy of non-cession of rights”. The full wording would be: “strategy of not assigning   copyright  exclusively to a publisher  ”. By immediately placing a CC-BY license on all their manuscripts up to the MAA, the authors avoid having their publication taken over entirely by the publisher. That’s why in English it’s called a “  retention of rights” strategy, because you don’t cede all your copyrights exclusively to the publisher. But to tell the truth, by putting a CC-BY license on his MAA, it is actually a “strategy of opening of rights”, since the scientist no longer needs to authorize other people to use his publication to translate it, distribute it, etc. Moreover, the author may freely reuse his own texts, graphics and other content for his courses or any communication, which is not the case when he assigns all of his rights to the publisher….”

The CNRS encourages its scientists to no longer pay to be published | CNRS

As part of the CNRS open science policy, scientific articles must be available in open access. The CNRS encourages its researchers to turn to free publication models for both authors and readers. Deputy Director General for Science, Alain Schuhl details these recommendations.

 

Important Notice regarding the OpenGrey Repository

“Inist-CNRS has given notice that as of November 30th 2020, they will cease hosting the <http://www.opengrey.eu/> OpenGrey Repository.

All of <http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=greynet> GreyNet’s content in OpenGrey including its full-text documents, PowerPoint slides, and accompanying (meta)data – have already migrated to other system providers, who are fully open access compliant: namely, the <http://greyguiderep.isti.cnr.it/> GreyGuide Repository, <https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/?wicket:bookmarkablePage=:nl.knaw.dans.easy.web.search.pages.PublicSearchResultPage&q=greynet> DANS Easy Archive, and the <https://av.tib.eu/search?f=publisher%3Bhttp://av.tib.eu/resource/GreyNet_International,stock%3Bhttp://schema.org/OnlineOnly> TIB-AV Portal.

If a new host for the OpenGrey Repository has not been identified before November 30th 2020, the remaining data that is primarily bibliographic, will be preserved in a closed archive.

GreyNet International having partnered with the OpenGrey Repository, since its launch 12 years ago under the name OpenSIGLE, remains truly grateful to Inist-CNRS for the opportunity to have collaborated on this open access initiative in the field of grey literature.”

Ready for the future? A survey on open access with scientists from the French National Research Center (CNRS)

“All survey results converge towards the fact that the researchers have generally accepted the idea of open access and that they consider it as globally beneficial for their field, even if their information and publishing behaviour may be somewhat delayed. In Europe, 461 research organisations and funders have adopted open access mandates and policies that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository7 ; many have signed national or international statements on open access, such as the Berlin Declaration. Both, individual awareness and uptake and institutional, political commitment are crucial for the further progress of open access.

Senior researchers, especially research managers and directors of research centres, are key stakeholders in this process in two ways:

  • They are appointed by their peers, coordinate the research activities and represent their colleagues in the executive and advisory bodies; as such, they act as a kind of transmission belt of the researchers’ opinions and demands, including reporting (bottom-up).
  • At the same time, they stand for the research organisation and are the guardians of the application of institutional decisions and rules within the local laboratory, including supervision, follow-up and control (top-down).

This intermediary or middle function may not always be an easy situation, as a latent source of conflict, but it makes them particularly interesting and influential as opinion leaders and even as potential models for good practice. For this reason, instead of a new assessment of scientists’ attitudes and behaviours towards open access, the CNRS conducted an exploratory survey on Scientific and Technological Information (STI) specifically at the senior management level, i.e. the directors of the CNRS research units (laboratories). One part of this survey was about open access. Our paper reports the survey results on open access, in particular to obtain answers to four questions:

  1. Do the CNRS senior research managers (laboratory directors) share the positive opinion towards open access revealed by recent studies with researchers from the UK, Germany, the United States and other countries? Are they supportive of open repositories and OA journal publishing?
  2. Does their information behaviour, i.e. use and production of open access publications, meet the challenge of open access or does it lag behind their opinions?
  3. Like in other studies, will this survey identify a group of unaware or even reluctant senior research managers not interested in open access?
  4. And finally, what can be said about differences between scientific disciplines?”