Tri-Agency Open Access Policy Draft: Key Changes and How Western Libraries Can Assist
Published on March 06, 2025
The Tri-Agencies recently shared a new draft of their Open Access Policy, featuring several revisions, with a proposed implementation date of January 1, 2026. This update comes a decade after the original 2015 policy, which significantly advanced open access initiatives. Researchers are encouraged to provide feedback on the draft until March 31, 2025, through the provided online form.
Western Libraries (WL) recognizes that keeping track of these obligations, in addition to the usual demands of academic publishing, can be daunting for any researcher. That's why we would like to help you understand the key requirements of the new policy draft and how our team of expert librarians can assist you.
| Key requirement | How we can help you |
|---|---|
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Article Deposit: Grant recipients must deposit their articles in a Canadian institutional repository at publication, even if the article is also published open access (OA). They must deposit a version of record or an author-accepted manuscript. |
You can deposit your accepted manuscript, published OA papers, and preprints in WL’s repository. Our librarians can help you identify which version of your paper is acceptable to share. |
|
Open Licensing: Articles must be deposited under an open license, such as Creative Commons. |
Our librarians are available to answer questions about open license options, to help you choose the best option for your work. |
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Rights Retention: Grant recipients must retain rights over the dissemination of any peer-reviewed research article. You will need to inform the publisher or journal of this obligation and right when submitting your article for publication. The Tri-Agencies will provide further instructions and a template with the final version of the revised policy. |
Our librarians can answer all your questions about these rights retention instructions and provide guidance. |
| Preprint Deposits: If the journal or publisher prohibits you from depositing the final published version or your author-accepted manuscript, you can deposit a preprint labeled as “unrefereed version” to a repository with an open license. | Our repository can accept deposits of preprints and we can help you identify which version of your paper is a preprint. |
|
Open Access Fees: The 2015 policy specifically mentioned that OA fees are a grant-eligible expense. The draft revised policy does not comment on OA fees. |
WL has several institutional memberships that give discounts on OA fees, and our librarians can advise you on how to make your work openly available without paying fees. |
For further assistance, contact Western Libraries at rsclib@uwo.ca. Feedback on the policy can be submitted through the Tri-Agencies online form.
