Japan's Push To Make All Research Open Access is Taking Shape (nature.com) 8
The Japanese government is pushing ahead with a plan to make Japan's publicly funded research output free to read. From a report: In June, the science ministry will assign funding to universities to build the infrastructure needed to make research papers free to read on a national scale. The move follows the ministry's announcement in February that researchers who receive government funding will be required to make their papers freely available to read on the institutional repositories from January 2025. The Japanese plan "is expected to enhance the long-term traceability of research information, facilitate secondary research and promote collaboration," says Kazuki Ide, a health-sciences and public-policy scholar at Osaka University in Suita, Japan, who has written about open access in Japan.
The nation is one of the first Asian countries to make notable advances towards making more research open access (OA) and among the first countries in the world to forge a nationwide plan for OA. The plan follows in the footsteps of the influential Plan S, introduced six years ago by a group of research funders in the United States and Europe known as cOAlition S, to accelerate the move to OA publishing. The United States also implemented an OA mandate in 2022 that requires all research funded by US taxpayers to be freely available from 2026. When the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced Japan's pivot to OA in February, it also said that it would invest around $63 million to standardize institutional repositories -- websites dedicated to hosting scientific papers, their underlying data and other materials -- ensuring that there will be a mechanism for making research in Japan open.
The nation is one of the first Asian countries to make notable advances towards making more research open access (OA) and among the first countries in the world to forge a nationwide plan for OA. The plan follows in the footsteps of the influential Plan S, introduced six years ago by a group of research funders in the United States and Europe known as cOAlition S, to accelerate the move to OA publishing. The United States also implemented an OA mandate in 2022 that requires all research funded by US taxpayers to be freely available from 2026. When the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced Japan's pivot to OA in February, it also said that it would invest around $63 million to standardize institutional repositories -- websites dedicated to hosting scientific papers, their underlying data and other materials -- ensuring that there will be a mechanism for making research in Japan open.
A word of caution (Score:2)
I sincerely hope Japan drafts wiggle-proof legislation to ensure that this work remains entirely in the public realm. I absolutely guarantee that a scumpoison of American copyright lawyers (scumpoison is the collective noun for these creatures) will immediately begin to develop strategies intended to get control of all this free research and take it for themselves.
The developers of insulin refused to patent their discovery so that diabetics all over the world would be able to afford treatment for their dis
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ROFL!!! I will absolutely use this...and attribute it to a Child of Methuselah.
Re: A word of caution (Score:1)
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I absolutely guarantee that ... American copyright lawyers ... will immediately begin to develop strategies intended to get control of all this free research and take it for themselves
Open Access to intellectual property doesn't nullify its copyright - Hollywood and the recording and publishing industrys made damn sure of that a long time ago.
The developers of insulin refused to patent their discovery ... Look what's happened to the cost of insulin in the United States
That's only a problem in the one place in the word where citizens consistently vote for out-of-pocket funded medical care with market set pricing. The price in that one country would be the same regardless of the patent status any medication.
A siege on the Ivory Tower (Score:2)
So, when the public pays for research, the public should be allowed to access it and benefit from it? What a preposterous idea!
(But really, good on you, Japan.)
Re: A siege on the Ivory Tower (Score:2)