Publications and open access
There were 615 IIASA publications in 2016, of which 406 were peer-reviewed journal articles, written in collaboration with over 1,500 coauthors from 159 institutions in 50 countries. The institute also launched its open access policy, which aims to make the full text of all peer-reviewed articles available, and achieved a 71% compliance rate in the first year.
IIASA follows the principles and rules laid out in its Scientific Publications Policy, which encourages the widest possible dissemination of researchers’ work. The policy also sets out the principles governing the various types of publications used by the institute to communicate its research results to outside audiences.
Open access – publications
In 2016, IIASA introduced a full open access policy for its publications in order to make its external and internal publications freely available via its new publications repository (PURE). The policy requires that all IIASA authors deposit a complete version of their peer-reviewed research articles in the IIASA institutional repository in order to make it freely accessible within a year of its online publication date (known as green open access).
IIASA encourages its researchers to publish their research in journal articles or books that are available for free to all users (gold open access) when possible. To support this IIASA has a fund for covering open access fees as of 2016 and is negotiating special agreements with publishers to offer more advantageous publishing options for its researchers.
To aid this endeavor a repository and open access manager was hired in 2016 to assist and encourage researchers to deposit materials, and to assure quality control and consistency of records and metadata.
PURE was launched in March 2016 and during the year a total 600 new publications were added. Out of these, 399 are articles, and 292 have an attached version, a compliance rate to the Open Access policy of 73%. For comparison, in 2009 the open access compliance level for Wellcome Trust-funded research was only 43% four years after introducing an open access mandate, and it was still only 55% in 2012. It was not until 2015 that compliance levels increased to over 70% after implementing sanctions for non-compliance.
Open access – data
Open access to data provides a range of advantages, such as improving the verifiability and reproducibility of the scientific results and making access to scholarly knowledge as barrier-free as possible. With this in mind, IIASA has established a task force which will take stock of the current status of open access data and research tools (e.g., models) at IIASA and explore alternative options for making data openly accessible, including an evaluation of the costs and benefits of alternative options at the level of individual scientists, research programs, and the institute as a whole. The task force—made up of researchers and IT experts —will also propose a Research Data Management Policy that establishes general principles for IIASA datasets and tools and create a long term vision for making tools developed at IIASA openly available. They will present their vision at the June 2017 Council meeting.