Denmark
Denmark has had discussion on open access issues for many years. Since 2009 this has increased, culminating in the national Open Access Committee’s recommendations (2011) towards a green open access policy in the country, enhancing the visibility and recognition of research output in a relatively small country. There are institutional mandates at the following universities: Aalborg University, Aarhus University, Copenhagen Business School, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Roskilde University. Danish National Research Foundation funds most of Denmark’s research through a network of Centres of Excellence.
Enabling Environment:
The Open Access Committee, ten members of the country’s library, research and academic communities, were tasked with developing an OA strategy and compliance with Council of the European Union Council’s conclusions on scientific knowledge in the digital age. The OA Committee recommendations include establishing a national OA policy; a green OA policy with quality assurance in conjunction with scientific publishers; promoting OA in all scientific, research and academic institutions; establishing one common national research database; developing activities within EU.
Potential Barriers:
A new government was constituted on the 3rd of October 2011 and it is uncertain whether the recommendations will be adopted by the new minister.
Major Projects/Initiatives:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF) is already collaborating in Knowledge Exchange (KE), along with JISC (UK), SURFfoundation (Netherlands) and DFG (Germany); OpenAIRE a new EC project is running from December 2009 till 2012.
National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates:
The OA Committee was mandated to make recommendations to the government on behalf of academic stakeholders following government approval of the Council of the European Union’ s conclusions on scientific information in the digital age.
Details of Key Organizations:
Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation
Overview: Serves and oversees a wide range of independent councils, commissions and committees which support and advise on research and innovation. It is the lead agent for the OA recommendations. Communication address: Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, Bredgade 40, DK-1260 Copenhagen K ; e-mail: fi(at)fi.dk
Past and Future OA Related Activities:
A number of OA projects have been completed with the support of Nordbib: Aiding scientific journals towards open access publishing; An e-print archive for Nordic arts and humanities; Development of information environment architecture for Nordic countries; Networks and knowledge dissemination in Nordic Asian study institutions; ScieCom Info - Nordic-Baltic forum for scientific communication (finished & extended); OA-barometer 2009; License to Publish : promoting Open Access and authors' rights in the Nordic social sciences and humanities; Networks and knowledge dissemination in Nordic Asian study institutions - phase 2.
A final project was launched in 2009 with the title "Retrodigitization of common Nordic scholarly journals." This project will target journals that are truly Nordic in nature and digitalise them into an Open Access context and attempt to use Creative Commons as a means of negotiating potential rights issues.
Danish Open Access Network has just been funded for another year from October 2011 – October 2012.
Public Access to research was funded by DEFF in 2007 – 2008 to raise awareness of OA-policies and self-archiving.
There is an active OA Committee who recently reported upon OA implementation and made recommendations (2011) for future OA work The report is under revision and together with a proposed national OA strategy for Denmark, will be presented for government consideration in December 2011
List of Publications
Open Access Committee (2011) Recommendations for implementation of Open Access in Denmark: Final Report. Danish Agency for Libraries and Media / Denmark's Electronic Research Library in collaboration with the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.
DOAJ (2011) The Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing
Dorch, B and Christensen-Dalsgaard, B (2008) Open access in Denmark ScieCominfo Vol 4, No 1 2008.
Duke and Jordan Ltd (2009) Evaluation of Nordbib: Final report to the Board June 2009. Undertaken on behalf of the partner organsiations.
Elbæk, M.K. (2009) From Repository Manager Workshop to a Danish OA network: a report from the Danish OA day 31. March 2009
Sciecominfo, 2, 2009.
Mikkelsen, L (2011) Central Open Access activities in Denmark ScieCominfo Vol 7, No 2 2011.
Mikkelsen, L (2010) Recommendations for implementation of Open Access in Denmark – extraction of comments from the hearing process ScieCom info Vol 6, No 4 2010.
Price, A (2009) Danish Open Access Network (DOAN) - A new Open Access network established ScieCominfo Vol 5, No 3 2009.
Thorsteinsdóttir, S (2010) OA Mandates and the Nordic Countries ScieCominfo, Vol 6 No 1 2010.