Norway

Enabling Environment:

OA endorsement by Ministry of Education and Research covers all institutions within its remit. The Norwegian Research Council, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services, Norwegian Institute for Drug and Alcohol Research, University of Bergen, Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology have all signed the Berlin Declaration. NORA promotes OA access to research.

Potential Barriers:

Intellectual property rights and quality assurance issues for authors; funding the cost of OA publishing to small, scholarly publishers or to authors.

Major Projects/Initiatives:

The cooperative group NORA also harvests metadata for institutions without OA archives; the BIBYS Brage project offers a repository service to institutions without the facility; HeRa at Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services provides health sector information; OA policies at Universities of Bergen, Oslo, Tromso and Trondheim; Norwegian Research Council provide a lateral impacting effect.

OpenDepot.org ensures that all academics worldwide can share the benefits of making their research output Open Access. For those whose universities and organisations have an online repository, OpenDepot.org makes them easy to find. For those without a local repository, including unaffilitiated researchers, the OpenDepot is a place of deposit, available for others to harvest.

National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates:

The Ministry of Education and Research requires institutions to make annual reports on OA developments and the Norwegian Research Council have OA deposit mandatory as part of project funding.

Funding Mandates

Norwegian Research Council has included, as part of its project funding awards since 2009, the deposit of peer-reviewed publications in an appropriate (institutional preferred) Open Access archive.  Allows for the expiry of the publisher's embargo period. Publisher’s copyright, licensing & embargo policies must be respected so a period of delay to allow the expiry of the publisher’s embargo period is allowed.

Details of Key Organizations:

Current Research Information System in Norway (Cristin)
Overview: Cristin is a organisation for research information and documentation in Norway. The organisation has been given responsibility and established by the Ministry of Education and Research and Ministry of Health and Care Services, and will cover the higher eduaction sector, research institutes and health autorities.
OA mandate: Responsibility for OA coordinaton
Communication address: Cristin, Forskningsveien 3b (map) 0373 OSLO Norway; e-mail: postmottak(at)cristin.no

National Library of Norway (NB)
Overview: The National Library of Norway aims to be the main source of information on Norway, its people and its culture and to make this available to the public. It has two sites in Oslo and Mo i Rana. It is the Legal Deposit Library of Norway.
OA mandate: Participant in European Digital Library (EDL) project. 
Communication address: (Oslo) Henrik Ibsens Gate 110, NO-0225, Oslo, Norway; e-mail: nb(at)nb.no

Norwegian Research Council
Overview: The Research Council is Norway's official body for the development and implementation of national research strategy. The Council is the primary research and funding body in Norway and encourages international research cooperation.
OA mandate: Requires Open Access archive as part of the research funding process. Recommends self archiving of peer-reviewed articles in institutional OA archives or through OA electronic journals and allows for the expiry of the publisher's embargo period to be respected.
Communication address: Norwegian Research Council,  Stensberggata 26, Oslo, Norway; e-mail:  post(at)forskningsradet.no

Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services Helsebiblioteket 
Overview: The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (NOKC) provides research information, publicises research results and  contributing to quality improvement and health service metrication to improve patient safety.
OA mandate: HeRA is the Norwegian Electronic Health Library's (Helsebiblioteket) open research archive for hospitals and other health institutions in Norway. It holds post print archives of peer reviewed journal articles, reviews, reports and other publications.
Communication address: Nasjonalt kunnskapssenter for helsetjenesten, PO Box 7004, St. Olavs plass, N-0130 Oslo, Norway; e-mail: post(at)nokc.no.

University of Bergen
Overview: The University of Bergen is an urban university with two sites: Årstadvollen is the University's "health campus", where dentistry, medicine and health-care lie close to the Haukeland and Haraldsplass university clinics and Nygårdshøyden where Natural and social sciences, psychology, the arts and law are taught.
OA mandate: A founder member of NORA, the university hosts Bergen Open Research Archive (BORA), its institutional repository for scientific and research outputs from the University of Bergen.
Communication address: University of Bergen Postboks 7800, NO-5020 BERGEN Bergen, Norway; e-mail: post(at)uib.no

University of Oslo (UiO)
Overview: The University is an active participant in the EU Seventh Framework Programme for research and development. It has 8 Centres of Excellence: Molecular Biology and Neuroscience; Physics of Geological Processes; Mathematics for Applications;  Equality, Social Organization and Performance ; Study of Mind in Nature; Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis; Cancer Biomedicine; Immune Regulation; Theoretical and Computational Chemistry.
OA mandate: All researchers must deposit their metadata (for articles) in FRIDA, UiO's research documentation system. It is as yet only compulsory to deposit metadata, not full-text.
University of Oslo also hosts DUO, a full-text institutional repository. It is planned to integrate the two systems to aloe self-archiving of full-text through FRIDA for transfer to DUO.
Communication address: Postboks 1085, Blindern 0317 Oslo e-mail: postmottak(at)ub.uio.no

The University of Tromso
Overview: The University of Tromso a broad range of subject fields in six faculties/schools with studies in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences/mathematics/statistics/informatics, law, medical sciences and fisheries science at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD level. Priority subject areas are mainly related to the Arctic and subarctic regions; Northern Light and space research, fisheries research, biotechnology, multicultural societies, indigenous studies, community medicine, theoretical linguistics, among others. The University has a Strategy on Internationalisation based on the notion of academic quality and seeks to strengthen all aspects of the University’s activities.
OA mandate: A founder member of NORA, University of Tromso offers Munin Open research archive depository and Septentrio Academic Publishing, a publishing infrastructure for scientific and scholarly journals/serials. A publication fund has been established to cover APCs for research without sufficient external funding.
Communication address: University of Tromsø, Romssa universitehta, N-9037 Tromso, Norway; e-mail:posymottak(at)uit.no

University of Trondheim (NTNU)
Overview: NTNU is the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and is at the forefront of technological innovation. It has 7 faculties; hosts 3 Centres of Excellence:  Quantifiable Quality of Service (Q2S);  Ships and Ocean Structure (CeSOS); Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) and hosts 4 Centres of Innovation:  Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry; Medical Imaging Laboratory for Innovative Future Healthcare; Structural Impact Laboratory; Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology  promoting research and development in cooperation with  industry and  other research organisations.
OA mandate: Founder member of NORA; has an agreement for free OA publishing with Springer (Open Choice).
Communication address: NTNU, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway; e-mail: postmottak(at)adm.ntnu.no

Thematic Open Access projects/Initiatives

Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services; Norwegian Institute for Drug and Alcohol Research has established OA repositories to serve aspects of the health sector; the Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology has instituted an OA policy.

List of Publications

Frantsvag, J.E (2008) Open access in Norway – where are we, and where are we going? Sciecom Info, Vol. 4, 1. Open Access.

Frantsvag, J.E (2011) The Open Access publication fund at the University of Tromso. In ScieCom Info. Vol 7, 1 (2011) Open Access.

Frantsvag, J.E (2010) The University of Tromso adopts an institutional open access policy. In ScieCom Info. Vol.6, 4. Open Access.

Harnad,S (2003) Open access to peer-reviewed research through author/institution selfarchiving: maximizing research impact by maximizing online access. In Digital Libraries: Policy, Planning, and Practice, eds. Derek Law and Judith Andrews: 63-98.

Hedlund, T and Rabow, I (2009) Scholarly publishing and open access in the Nordic countries Learned Publishing Vol 22, 3:177-186.

Huela, B N, (2010) Scholars and institutional repositories: perceptions of academic auth ors towards self-archiving their scholarly works in the Bergen Open Research Archive. Master’s Thesis. University of Oslo. Open Access.

Thorsteinsdóttir, S (2010) OA Mandates and the Nordic Countries  Sciecom Info, Vol. 6, 1. Open Access.