The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA) Provides OA to the Research it Funds
From the CBCRA web site:
We have created a unique [open-access] repository of peer-reviewed literature on breast cancer research, research supported by CBCRA. We believe it is the first of its kind, initiated by us because we believe that the public should have free access to research results funded by public agencies….CBCRA is the primary granting agency for breast cancer research in Canada….To date, CBCRA has allocated $138 million to top-quality breast cancer research in Canada.
The CBCRA doesn’t mandate OA to its research, although it’s thinking about a mandate for the future. It simply tries to provide OA to all the CBCRA-funded research that it can. Instead of doing this by contract, at the time of funding, it does it by painstaking requests for permission sent to grantee-authors and their publishers after they have published research based on CBCRA funding. First it tracks down authors and asks them to sign a license. Then it contacts their publisher and asks for permission to post an OA copy of the article to the CBCRA repository. It doesn’t send its queries until at least 12 months after publication, when publishers are more likely to agree. When it gets no replies, it sends out its letters again.
Using this arduous method since February of this year, CBCRA has been able to provide OA to about 25% of its research. About 62% of authors and 70% of publishers have agreed to the OA proposition. It’s considering a mandate in part to enlarge its OA coverage to 100% and in part to reduce or eliminate the large administrative burden of permission-seeking.
Kudos to the CBCRA for the steps it has already taken and for considering a mandate for the future. Unlike the Wellcome Trust, which is private, and the Research Councils UK, which are public, the CBCRA is an alliance with members on each side of the line. Its motto is: “Canada’s unique collaboration of public, private and non-profit organizations.”
The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA)
http://www.breast.cancer.ca/
The CBRCA’s OA repository, hosted by the University of Toronto
https://researchspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807.1/1
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_02_fosblogarchive.html#115231219745255122
SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #100/August 2, 2006
