Spain

Spain

The National Government in Spain is fully committed with the OA2020 target, and it has been working on designing and implementing its open access policy. Nowadays, the legal framework regulating the open access deposit of scientific publications is the Act 14/2011, of June 1, on Science, Technology and Innovation, which urges researchers to deposit the final digital version of their contributions to journals in an open access repository.

Article 37 “Open access dissemination” mandates the following:

  1. Public workers of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation System will drive forward the development of own or shared open access repositories for the publications of their researchers and will establish systems allowing their connection to similar national or international initiatives.
  2. Researchers whose research is financed mostly with funds from the General Budget of the State will make public a digital final version of the contents that have been accepted for publication in research journals, as soon as possible and no later than twelve months after the official date of publication.
  3. The electronic version will be made public in open access repositories recognised in the field of knowledge of the research or in open access institutional repositories.
  4. The public electronic version may be used by public administrations in their assessment procedures.
  5. The Science and Innovation Ministry will facilitate centralized access to repositories and their connection to similar national or international initiatives.
  6. The above is understood without prejudice of the agreements by virtue of which rights over the publications have been conferred or transferred to third parties, and will not be applied when the rights over the results of research, development and innovation are liable to protection.

Aiming to reinforce the application of the Article 37 on open access dissemination within the Law 14/2011, FECYT published a set of recommendations for the implementation of the Article 37 of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation Act (2014), developed by a group of experts. Another relevant report published by FECYT is the report on good practices for the management of research data (2012), aiming to assist in the standardization of research data management in repositories to facilitate its preservation, access and distribution.

The Spanish Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2013-2020 envisages access to data and microdata, as well as publications and results publicly funded research as one of its six articulation mechanisms. The main aim of this initiative is to drive the development of repositories, own or shared, open access to the publications of its research staff, and establish systems to connect with similar initiatives nationally and internationally. The regulation related to official PhD studies (RD99/2011, January 28th) includes the mandate for Universities to deposit an Open Access electronic copy of all PhD theses at the institutional repositories.

Additionally, it may also be relevant to mention the regulation related to the transparency of public sector information.

Nevertheless, policies are still a work in progress, as stated by the ERA Spanish National Roadmap (2016)remarking the need to review and adapt existing policies for the promotion of open science (publication of results and data) covered by –national and international– experiences and recommendations.