Introduction

The European Commission supports open access as the standard way of disseminating publicly funded research in the European Union and includes open circulation of knowledge as one of the five priorities of the European Research Area (COM(2012) 392 final^[1]).

In the summer of 2012 it recommended that Member States develop national policies that will provide open access to publicly funded research and that RFOs and RPOs accordingly develop their own policies, coordinated at the national and European level (C(2012) 4890 final^[2]).

Further, open access will be required for all peer-reviewed publications resulting from Horizon 2020 funding [http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/]. Horizon 2020 also includes a pilot action on open access to research data. Moreover, the European University Association (http://www.eua.be/), already in 2008, has issued recommendations regarding open access^[3]and in a recent joint memorandum drawn up with the European Commission (2013)^[4]both parties decided on open access to publicly funded research (publications and data) and the creation of open access repositories.

At national level, Law 4310/2014 on research, technology development, innovation and other regulations, supports open access to publicly funded research and is in line with the relevant European legislation.

By removing legal, commercial and technological barriers to access of scientific information the research process becomes more efficient and research results more visible. Furthermore, open access prevents duplication, fosters knowledge and technological transfer and promotes innovation.

Different stakeholders in the scholarly communication system benefit from open access to scientific research and research data:

• Institutions and authors gain immediate visibility for their research output and thus the dissemination and usage of their results increases. Open access leads to an increase of impact of the scientific output, of international collaboration and it opens ways to new funding sources and opportunities.
• Researchers save time seeking articles and other bibliography resources that they cannot access through their libraries. Moreover, they can extract information or data from articles, often across diverse field of research, to create new multilevel and combined knowledge by using text and data mining technologies that can only work effectively on open research content.
• Funding agencies, universities and research institutions monitor the quality and transparency of the research process, the return on investment on research, and they benefit of increased visibility at a national and at an international level. They can also adopt new models for research assessment thanks to alternative metrics, such as the evaluation of research based on publications in the repository, indexation and monitoring of publications and other research efforts as recorded in CRIS systems, the researchers registry of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, etc.
• Libraries are potential beneficiaries of open access adoption since it enables them to provide their users with increased access to scholarly materials and could help to reduce the amount libraries spend on traditional journal subscriptions. With the right investment in skills and infrastructure, it also offers them the possibility to assume new roles as providers of open access services (managing repositories and/or publishing activities) and advisory services for new methods of scholarly communication.
• Publishers who adopt open access may obtain more exposure for their publications, they are more open to new opportunities and focus on providing new added value services to their community.
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can greatly benefit from immediate and open access to groundbreaking research results to innovate by developing and introducing new products and services and to increase their competitiveness. Limited access to subscription-based scholarly outputs may become an obstacle to innovation by SMEs.

Finally, widened and improved transparency of the scientific process and the consequent access to knowledge leads to more science-literate citizens, better capable of thriving in the complexities of the 21st century.

Policy regulations

Taking the above into consideration, the International Hellenic University ANTICIPATES that the faculty, associates and students will maximize the access, usage and applications of their findings. Subsequently,

Effective from 10/02/2015 the International Hellenic University (IHU):

1. Requires its members to deposit in the institutional repository, the IHU Repository, through the process of self-archiving, an electronic copy of all peer-reviewed articles, books/monographs, book chapters, conference proceedings, Master’s dissertations and PhD theses, working papers, technical reports, intermediate and/or final reports of research programmes that have been accepted for publication (author’s final copy or publisher’s version), provided they are holders of the publications’ rights of those documents.
2. Requires that the metadata (title, authors, institutional affiliation, name of journal that accepted the publication, etc.) of all publications, as defined in paragraph 1, to be made immediately openly available at the moment of deposit in the IHU Repository.
3. Requires that the full text of all publications, as defined in paragraph 1, be made openlyavailableat the time of the deposit or as soon as possible thereafter. In the case of publications that cannot be made immediately openly available because of publisher or author restrictions, the deposit mentioned in paragraph 1 remains mandatory, but the access will be set to closed until the embargo period, as set by the publisher and/or the author, elapses.
4. Requires the full text of all Master’s dissertations to be licensed by the open license Creative Commons BY-NC v.4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
5. Requires, for all PhD theses, the Doctorate holders to complete the relevant form of the National Documentation Centre (NDC, Greek acronym: ΕΚΤ) for the mandatory subsequent deposit of the PhD thesis in the National Archive of PhD Theses of the National Documentation Centre http://www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/, in accordance with Law 1566/1985. The Doctorate holders should comply with the terms and conditions set by the National Archive of PhD Theses.
6. As regards the terms of deposit of PhD theses in the IHU Repository, the Doctorate holders have the right to set any “Creative Commons” open license they wish and also to set an embargo period until the full access and publication of their thesis, which should not exceed a period of one year.
7. Will only consider as publications by academic community/staff those whose metadata and full texts are deposited in the IHU Repository, for purposes of assessment and evaluation of the scientific output by the Institution and also the faculty.
8. Will monitor compliance with this policy comparing the repository content against what is recorded by indexing services.

The above regulations apply for all publications produced after this policy comes into effect.

Further, the International Hellenic University:

→ Encourages its Research Staff/Faculty to retain ownership of the copyright of their publications wherever possible and only grant publishers those rights necessary for the publication. Thus, the International Hellenic University states to all its researchers:

Your article has been accepted for publication in a scientific journal and as all your fellow researchers you would wish for its broadest possible dissemination and for the biggest possible impact in the academia. Nevertheless, it is usual that the publication agreement that you have signed with the journal’s publisher will not allow you to do so.

We take for granted that you would never deliberately hide your research from an audience that would benefit from it. By signing a limiting publishing contract though, you are also limiting the scientific audience which you address and you are reducing your impact as author.

This happens when, in accordance with the traditional publishing contract, all rights including copyright, are transferred to the journal. You would possibly wish to include part of your article in future work. Also, you might wish to distribute copies of your article to your students or colleagues. And surely you would like to upload your article in your personal web page or the institutional repository, if you have this option. All these ways of disseminating your research and achieving your goals as a researcher/member of academia are restricted due to the traditional publishing contract you have signed.

Nevertheless, there is a way to retain all these rights of critical importance. The International Hellenic University encourages its researchers to only grant publishers those rights necessary for the publication. Moreover, IHU encourages its researchers to use the author’s contract addenda information http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendumthat are actually used for the preservation of the authors’ rights, such as SPARC Author Addendum http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf, which is a legal act amending the publishing contract and allows you to retain basic rights for your articles. The SPARC Author Addendum is an open access resource developed by SPARC^[5] in cooperation with Creative Commons^[6] and Commons Science^[7] and established non-profit organisations, providing a series of options as regards copyright for various creative efforts.

→ IHU encourages its members to deposit in the IHU Repository (which offers open access to the research data, enables data citation through persistent identifiers (handle), provides quality metadata, including acknowledgement of research funding, based on accepted guidelines and standards), all research datasets that serve as evidence for publicly available research reports and/or citation in peer-reviewed publications.

Final remarks

The International Hellenic University is committed to ensuring the curation and long-term preservation of research results deposited in IHU Repository.

For the production of this Policy, the International Hellenic University was based on the guidelines of the open access policies of Medoanet^[8].

The International Hellenic University is committed to increasing the number of resources, tools and options of the IHU Repository, to facilitate the deposit, to train researchers to use the Repository, to provide information on copyright, to investigate data management drafts, and to develop a long-term preservation management plan.

Although this policy applies only to those publications subsequent to the date it comes into effect, the International Hellenic University encourages its members to deposit in the IHU Repository the publications authored prior to this date and to make them openly accessible, whenever possible.

Confidential information

In cases of publications, as defined in paragraph 1, for which the author invokes confidential information and data, written evidence of the confidentiality is required to be provided by the author. In every publication that confidential information and data that render open access impossible are included, the publication will mandatorily be deposited in the IHU Repository as a hidden file, i.e it will be visible only to the administrators of the IHU Repository, the author and any other third party (person or legal institution) that the author will grant access. As far as theses are concerned, apart from the author, access will be given to the supervisor and the three members of the evaluation committee. Open access will apply to the metadata of these publications.

Finally, the deposit is mandatory on the basis of archiving, evaluating and long term preservationof the academic output of the Institution and obtaining the relevant diploma in cases of Master’s and PhD theses.