Open Access Policy
Open Access – the unrestricted access to scientific publications – is an ongoing trend in the scientific environment worldwide. In this way, scientific publications and other digital material, such as research data, are freely accessible via the world-wide-web.
In agreement with this policy, IST Austria is committed to provide unrestricted and cost-free online access to scientific publications for all users and researchers as widely as possible. The main goal is to increase the visibility, use, and impact of research output, and hereby generate added value for the scientific community.
There are several reasons for the quick implementation of the Institute’s repository for scientific publications, data, and other research outputs:
1. The impact of research will be increased since there is growing evidence that research deposited in Open Access repositories are used and cited more frequently.
2. The Institute’s repository of scientific output will support compliance with requirements of the European Research Council (ERC), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and other funding bodies that mandate research output to be openly available.
3. The open repository approach ensures that each research output has consistent metadata and ensures longevity which, for example, a researcher’s own website does not.
4. Scientists, research groups, or the Institute itself can use the data to provide automatically generated output for their own websites, reports, or their curriculum vitae.
5. Future possible metrics for the assessment of scientific output will require that IST Austria’s research be widely cited and hence must be as visible as possible.
The Open Access Policy at ISTA was put into practice on February 15, 2014.
