Open Access: why?

An Open Access publication is immediately and freely available online, to read, download, copy, print, disseminate or search. As a publicly-funded institute, our aim is to increase the proportion of research publications in Open Access. The EUI Open Access Policy encourages its members to facilitate the dissemination of their published research by depositing it with Cadmus, the EUI research repository. Cadmus aims at communicating EUI research output and has served the goals of Open Access from its birth (already) in 2003. Currently work is ongoing for a clearer and strengthened EUI institutional Open Access Policy.

EUI Theses

After more than 40 years, nearly 600 out of 2700 EUI theses are Open Access, and in the last two years this number has more than doubled. Moreover, since 2017, the Library disposes of a complete digital archive of theses defended at the EUI. Graduates are warmly invited to contact [email protected] in order to make their thesis available in Open Access.

Advantages

Immediate visibility and accessibility of research results · Increased possibility to be cited · Attribution of unique and persistent identifiers: a handle and a digital object identifier (DOI), issued for each thesis in Cadmus · Strong guarantee for claiming your work, and to refer to it with a persistent unique identifier · The copyright of an EUI Open Access thesis remains with the author · Open Access availability does not exclude the commercial publication.

Open Access and publishers

Recent trends show that journal and book publishers agree that prior versions of published work remain in Open Access. This is the case of Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press (etc.), where the original thesis manuscript in Open Access is acceptable, even when they have published a book based on that EUI thesis. A published version of a thesis is different from the original manuscript and they can exist side by side. In Cadmus, the original thesis manuscript is always interlinked with the commercially published version of the thesis. This also increases the visibility of the published book. Library staff works with and for the academic community to increase Open Access publications and to create greater visibility for them. They also assists authors in checking copyright and restrictions, and in contacting publishers on issues related to Open Access.

Researchers to take a stand for Open Access

Ph.D. researchers — you should think about your audience: when put in front of the choice between Embargoed or Open Access, take a stand and opt for Open Access, giving the widest access to your research. Moreover, do not give away all your rights when signing contracts with publishers. Ask for the right to keep your Ph.D. work in Open Access.

Recent achievements and the near future

· In the January 2017 International Ranking of Repositories, Cadmus is the 1st in Italy for the fifth consecutive time

· In February 2017 Cadmus reached 20,000 publications

· The EUI Library supports ORCID — create your unique ORCID author identifier!

· Next International Open Access week is 23-29 October 2017, get involved!