Italy
In Italy, the Decree No.91 dated August 8, 2013 stated that the publication of results from researchers with public funds accounting for at least 50% should be stored electronically in free access free-of-charge repositories. At the same time, the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI) have signed a position statement to encourage the creation of repositories.
Italy has 74 OA digital repositories registered in OpenDOAR, most of which are institutional. Mappa Open Data (MOD) is the first Italian repository for Open Access publication of archaeological data. 308 OA journals indexed in DOAJ. Research is carried out in universities and research institutions and is mostly funded by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research.
Enabling Environment:
There is a strong information infrastructure in Italy; 34 institutions have a mandate for PhD theses deposition, while 2 have institutional mandates (LUISS, Italian National Health Institute - ISS).
ISS has a policy that states that: ‘All scientific works produced by ISS staff must be transmitted in electronic format (author’s final copy, after peer-review: “post-print”) to the Publishing Activities Unit of ISS, at the moment of acceptance for publication and is immediately available on the ISS Intranet. The metadata is also be made available on the Internet, via DSpace ISS and, after the publisher embargo period has expired, the full texts will be made available.
Potential Barriers:
There is no national OA mandate in Italy and not all institutions have adopted OA policies.
Major Projects/Initiatives:
Work in progress in Italy with regard to internationally important repositories:
- DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities), the infrastructure for free access to humanistic research data, involving CNR.
- SCOAP (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), where the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) for the implementation of an alternative business model of subscription to journals is engaged.
- The PID (Persistent IDentifier) working group, aimed at creating a data tracking system based on codes identifying data, also involving the Italian Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
- Several projects on Big Data storage and processing, also involving the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
- BRIF (Bioresource Research Impact Factor) for the identification and archiving of biological samples and related data, with the strong involvement of Instituto Superiore di Sanita.
- Opening Science to Society, an initiative for data sharing within the scientific field involving the University of Rome Sapienza.
Italy was represented by CNR Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in the European project Recode (RECommendations for Open Access to Research Data) in Europe, aimed at analyzing benefits and issues of Open Access to data.
G8 Conference 2013-2017: Will provide capacity building support to develop and improve national agricultural and rural linked Open Data.
March 2014: Major regional repository infrastructure initiatives agree to align their activities and networks. Delegates identified several key elements that were to be addressed under the auspices of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), an international alliance of repository initiatives.
2013 onwards: Publishing of the inventory/catalogue of the agriculturally relevant data on website http://dati.gov.it.
Conference of Italian Universities Rectors (CRUI) established a Working Group on OA that has produced recommendations and guidelines on OA for research, repositories, research assessment, institutional repositories, and publications during the period 2007-2009. 71 universities and 2 research institutions are signatories of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
Portal for the Italian Electronic Literature in Open and Institutional Archives (PLEIADI) provides information and promotes awareness of OA in the scholarly community from its website.
National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates:
As of May 2015, there are 44 Open Access Policies registered in ROARMAP, 4 of them being funders' OA mandates and 38 OA policies from research organizations.
In September 2013, The "Open by Default" concept was introduced with the government decree named "Growth 2.0".
Telethon (Italian not-for-profit institution promoting research in muscular dystrophy and other genetic disorders): On July 22nd 2010 Telethon introduced its Open Access Policy. This applies to research papers resulting from new awards, as well as to existing grants. Telethon considers supporting unrestricted access to the published output of research a fundamental part of its mission. To this end, Telethon has joined the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), a free-to-access digital archive of peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences research. The full policy is available online.
Details of Key Organizations:
CRUI working group on Open Access
Overview: Established in order to coordinate and promote activities on Open Access at a national and institutional level. Its main activities are related to drafting some guidelines related to recommendations for OA repositories and journals implementation, and for the deposition of PhD theses into OA repositories. It promotes the inclusion of an OA related clause in the current university bylaws. Communication address: e-mail: segreteriacrui(at)crui.it
Portal for the Italian Electronic Literature in Open and Institutional Archives (PLEIADI)
Overview: PLEIADI is a portal for Italian scholarly e-literature in open archives and institutional repositories) originated from the collaboration between two major Italian university consortia, CASPUR and CILEA, within the framework of the AEPIC project. The website offers information on OA, a platform for discussion and information exchange through an OA-wiki-Italia and coordination of the OA-Italia mailing list. Communication address: e-mail: pleiadi(at)openarchives.it
Thematic Open Access projects/Initiatives
The ISS coordinates (2009-2012) the EU-funded project NECOBELAC, related to the field of public health. It aims to: improve scientific writing; promote open access publication models; and foster technical and scientific cooperation between Europe & Latin American Caribbean (LAC) countries.
Past and Future OA Related Activities:
November 2014: The University of Messina in Sicily, Italy, held an event on the "Messina Declaration 2.0: the Italian road to Open Access". The main event goal was to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Messina open Access Declaration issued in 2004.
30 January 2014: Open Access: Priorities, Obstacles and Opportunities; Turin, Italy.
27 February 2014: Second Conference OpenGeoData Italy; Rome, Italy.
Italy participated in SCOAP3 Working Group (2007), EUA OA Working group (2008), SELL OA Working Group (2010) and the PEER WP3 project on OA sustainability. It is participating in OpenAIRE and NECOBELAC, and it will take part in two EU-funded projects on OA, OpenAIREplus and MEDOANET.
Universities in Italy promote awareness of OA and the sharing of best OA practice through conferences and seminars during the Open Access week.
Regarding PLEIADI, the future plans are related to the revision of architecture and new interface deployment; the new harvester (that will not be limited to full text data provider as the present one), is going to be released during the Open Access week 2011.
Future collaboration with DART Europe to provide metadata for Italian doctoral theses (at present, 10 Italian universities are contributing to DART).
Open Science and Open Data Related Events
12-14 September, 2016: EO Open Science 2016. Frascati, Italy
22 February, 2016: Pasteur4OA - Regional Workshop for Research Performing Organizations of SW Europe. Torino, Italy
July 2015: Università degli Studi di Trieste: “Empowering graduate students: science dissemination and science communication 'in the open'".
This was a FOSTER-supported training programme organized in partnership with EIFL with the aim of setting in place sustainable mechanisms for EU researchers to Foster Open Science. This was one of the 24 training programmes organized in 2015 for the the research communities of 17 other EU countries.
March 2015: Open Science: A New Way to Make research Better; Rome, Italy.
October 2013: Meeting "E-Science: Towards an Open Access Italian Network" held in Rome at the National Research Council (CNR) HQ. The aim of the day was to share the results obtained under the MedOANet (Mediterranean Open Access Network) project. The meeting allowed to discuss the project state of the art in Europe, governance methods as well as to share ongoing national projects.
List of Publications
"Report on the Tenth Anniversary Open Access event in Messina" by Sara Valla and Benedetta Alosi released as a follow-up on the OA discussions held in Messina.
"A Roadmap for Open Access from Messina towards Europe: the New Italian Road to Open Access Launched at Messina" by Benedetta Alosi e Nunzio Femmino published in Bibliotime, XVII, Issue 3 (Nov 2014).
Novemebr 2013: Towards an Open Access Italian Network
March 2013: Position Statement on Open Access to Research Outputs in Italy.
Cassella, M & Gargiulo P (2009) Open Access in Italy, 2009. (Unpublished) [Report].
Comba, V (2005) Italian Universities for Open Access: Towards Open Access for Scholarly Literature: Report of the Messina Workshop, Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 22 (1): 16 -17. DOI: 10.1108/07419050510588232
Delle Donne, R. (2007) CRUI and Open Access in Italy, 2007. In Corriere della Sera. In Berlin 5 Open Access: From practice to impact : Consequences of Knowledge dissemination,Padova (Italy),19-21 September. (Unpublished) [Presentation].
De Castro, P and Poltronieri, E (2008), Taking the first steps towards institutional open access Research Information: June / July 2008.
Gargiulo P (2006): Open Access in Italy: Achievements and Future Prospects; Published in the International Journal of Legal Information, Vol. 34, Issue 2.
Gargiulo P and Fava, I (2011) Implementing OpenAire in Italy: challenges and lessons learned. Presentation at Eurocris Meeting, Bologna 26-27 May 2011.
Gargiulo, P et al. (2005) PLEIADI: a portal solution for scholarly literature. In: ELPUB Proceedings, Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium, 8-10 June, 2005.
Galimberti, P and Vignocchi, M (2007) Time for a change: the Italian CRUI-Open Access Working Group’s action for a national etheses provision service. Unpublished paper.
Poltronieri, E et.al (2010) Science, institutional archives and open access: an overview and a pilot survey on the Italian cancer research institutions
Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research 2010, 29:168
SCOAP Working Party (2007) Towards Open Access Publishing in High Energy Physics Report of the SCOAP3 Working Party. CERN: Geneva.
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