Open Access policy for the National Library of Sweden

The Open Access principles concern several aspects of the operations of the National Library and the process of developing a coherent Open Access policy for the National Library has begun.

The OA policy is intended to promote the National library's internal coordination and communicate a clear common position.

The National Library of Sweden is publicly funded and will therefore actively promote maximum public access to cultural heritage as well as to scientific knowledge.

This concern is well in line with the duties of the library to make Swedish publications and audio-visual material available to the public and to develop the Swedish research infrastructure.

The Berlin Declaration

The National Library of Sweden signed in 2006 the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The library hence has an obligation to promote Open Access to scientific knowledge as well as cultural heritage.

Open Access principles concern several aspects of the operations of the national library and it is therefore now formulating a coherent Open Access policy. The OA policy is intended to promote the National library’s internal coordination and communicate a clear common position.

Policy areas

The Open Access policy covers the following areas:

• The National Library of Sweden supports the development of Open Access publishing within higher education, in the form of institutional Open Access repositories as well as Swedish Open Access journals. This support is at present implemented within the OpenAccess.se programme in partnership with major stakeholders of higher education and research. 
• The National Library of Sweden acts as the coordinating agency for the Swedish e-licensing consortium. In this role it actively promotes a development where licensing deals support Open Access publishing of Swedish researchers.
• The non copyright protected material that the library digitizes from its collection shall be made openly accessible on the Internet, in exceptional cases with a certain delay.
• The staff of the library are required to ask for the right to make their articles available in Open Access mode on the website of the NL Sweden within 6 months from publication, when they publish in scientific and professional journals within the scope of their employment.
• The publications from the library shall, as a rule, be made openly available on the Internet without delay.
• The National Library of Sweden will use Creative Commons licenses, whenever applicable, to clarify the conditions of use of publications from the library.
• The Metadata created or aggregated by the library are freely available to use and reuse without restriction for any third party.

In this policy the National Library of Sweden expresses its principal standpoints. The concrete details will be elaborated after further discussions internally and with external stakeholders.