The policy documents of the Nordic universities regarding open access – a comparative analysis

The availability of both research results and data is appealing to different actors, which has increased the interest in open access significantly during the past decades. Generally, a more openly access to research results is regarded as a positive movement as this contributes to a faster spread of information, increase of visibility of research and the promotion of research collaborations. However, resistance concerning this movement exists such as limitations of the academic freedom, difficulties in choosing the right publication channel. This master thesis examines policy documents regarding the Nordic academic institutions’ approach to open access. It focuses on the communication style in policy documents, specifically whether researchers’ publishing freedom is considered when policies impose restrictions on researchers’ choice of publication type or channel. In order to examine the presented factors, an indication model was created that functions as a specification in which bearing concepts appear in the policies. The model could in the future guide policy makers when deciding which type of information is necessary to include in a policy. A finding in this study is that the majority of guidelines in policy documents remain relatively liberal concerning the manner in which scientific publication should be performed at each institution. The follow-up of the open access requirements in the policies is usually left to the interpretation of the individual researcher which makes the impact of the policies more difficult to analyse. In conclusion, the study shows a variation of open access policies, partly regarding outline and content, and partly concerning communication mode towards their recipients