UNESCO Open Access Policy Guidelines

A careful, thorough, well-informed, evidence-based and comprehensive review and analysis of guidelines for open access policy and promotion — released by UNESCO and written by Alma Swan: Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access. This publication may be downloaded here. Excerpts:

Evidence has unequivocally demonstrated that to have real effect policies must be mandatory, whether institutional or funder policies …

Evidence shows that researchers are quite happy to be mandated to act in this way …

Policies can require ‘green’ Open Access by self-archiving but to preserve authors’ freedom to publish where they choose policies should only encourage ‘gold’ Open Access through publication in Open Access journals.