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- Japan\u2019s government gets started on its nationwide plan to make publicly funded research free to read by investing \u00a510 billion (\u00a350 million).<\/li>\n
- This investment will be used to standardise institutional data\/publication repositories, making all research available on the same national server.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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<\/p>\nIn June, the Japanese government took another step towards its goal of making publicly funded research papers free to access from April 2025. As reported<\/a> by Dalmeet Singh Chawla for Nature News<\/em><\/a>, this makes Japan one of the first countries in the world to launch a plan for open access (OA) on a national scale.<\/p>\n
Investment in infrastructure <\/strong><\/p>\n
To make the transition to OA, the Japanese government will invest \u00a510 billion (around \u00a350 million) to standardise university data and publication repositories. While each institution will host research by their own academics, these repositories will all be hosted on the same national server. The result: Japan will have \u201ca unified record of all research produced by its academics\u201d that, importantly, does not overlook articles published in Japanese.<\/p>\n
A green OA strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s transition to open science is based on green OA, a strategy the government considers more feasible for universities than a gold OA model. As reported by Singh Chawla, experts in open science and OA have praised the Japanese government\u2019s plans.\u00a0 Johan Rooryck, Executive Director of cOAlition S<\/a>, supported the use of green OA \u201cespecially for all the content that is still behind the paywall\u201d. Meanwhile, Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories<\/a>, highlighted the equitable nature of the plans.<\/p>\n
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