Open access aims to ensure free, immediate and permanent access to publications and data without technical or legal barriers.
Resolutely committed and active in its efforts to ensure open access, Inra has set 7 major policy goals, presented in its Open Access and Open Data Policy.
Open access to publications
In 2006, Inra established an open, institutional archive called ProdInra. The Institute’s publications are uploaded in open access, in compliance with the rights of authors and publishers.
Scientists are strongly encouraged to upload full-length versions of their articles on ProdInra and to choose open-access publication formats, i.e. which do not transfer exclusive rights to publishers and which guarantee free access to these articles.
The costs of publishing open access articles (the APC, or ‘article processing charge’) can be calculated and financed as part of research projects – H2020 projects, for example.
ProdInra provides content to several portals – including ScanR, OpenAire (European Union), Agris (FAO), HAL, Isidore, the biodiversity portal, and the environment portal – which allows Inra research to be shared widely.
Inra journals with free access
Inra is the publisher and co-publisher of academic journals whose contents are included in major abstract and citation databases (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus). The journals themselves have been ranked in internationally recognized classification systems such as the Journal Citation Report and Scimago. In Inra journals, open access takes two forms:
- The green road applies to journals which adhere to a “subscription” model. Articles published by these journals can be freely accessed in HAL (France’s national open-access archive) one year after they were first published. In 2016, more than 25,000 articles were open access. In some cases, the entirety of a journal’s contents, from its moment of creation, was available (e.g., 1921 for the journal Le Lait or 1923 for the Annals of Forest Science).
- The gold road applies to journals which have opted to make their articles immediately available for free based on the payment of publication fees by the authors’ research institutions.
Open access to data
Providing open access to research data is a double-sided objective for the Institute:
- to make data available in the interest of transparency and proof (to support scientific publications, for citizens, journalists, civil society, NGOs, and for citizen science, for example);
- to re-use data, with the aim of creating value and accelerating innovation.
This two-sided ambition involves a strong in-house commitment to the management and promotion of the data produced by the Institute, as well as a shift in research practices towards discovering and exploiting data produced “outside our walls”.
After publishing the its Open Access and Open Data Policy, INRA created Datapartage, a data-sharing web site for the scientific community for the purpose of managing research data. The Data Inra repository is an additional component to the data services offer.
Open Access at Inra: a timeline
In 2005, Inra signs the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
In 2006, Inra establishes ProdInra, its open, institutional archive.
In 2011, 11% of Inra publications – nearly 500 articles – are released in open access format. With this economic model, publication costs are paid by authors (units), and access to the articles is free. PloS, and its publication Plos One, becomes the biggest open access publisher for Inra, with 37% of its publications in open access format.
In 2012, Inra joined Biomed Central and PloS, bringing to 65% the portion of Inra publications available in open access format.
In late 2013, the PloS subscription is not renewed, following a change in the publisher’s economic model.
In 2016, Inra creates Datapartage, a site dedicated to the management and sharing of scientific data, which presents a data services offer.
September 2016, Inra publishes its Open Access and Open Data Policy.
February 2018, Data Inra, Inra’s data repository, is launched.
August 2019, the Biomed Central subscription is not renewed.
Learn more about Inra initiatives in support of Open Science, and in particular new methods of disseminating knowledge, at 2025.inra.fr/openscience.
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