You share, we take care!

The ambition of the Netherlands is to achieve 100% open access by 2020. Agreements have been made with many publishers about open access publishing. Unfortunately, this is not possible for all types of publications or journals. However, Dutch copyright law offers an alternative.

Article 25fa of the Copyright Act (Taverne Amendment) allows researchers to share short scientific works (e.g. articles & book chapters), regardless of any restrictive publishers' guidelines.

Taverne Amendment

The maker of a short scientific work, the research for which has been paid for in whole or in part by Dutch public funds, shall be entitled to make that work available to the public for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work.

The Dutch universities have decided to give open access an extra boost from 2019 by starting a pilot. On the basis of the Taverne Amendment, the publishers' versions of short scientific works can be made available after six months via the university repository. It is important that the researcher explicitly asks for this.

Conditions for participation

The university libraries can make your publication available in the repository. The period of publication after six months applies under the following conditions:

The publication is funded wholly or partly with Dutch public funds.
The maker(s) has/have an employment contract with an institution participating in the pilot; the makers can be both authors and co-authors.
It is a short scientific work; this has the length of a scientific article or book chapter in an edited collection.

How does it work?

Contact your university library if you want to participate.
The university library will verify the conditions with you and provide additional information to make the publication available in the repository.
Your short scientific work is made available in the repository and can now be shared freely with scientists and audiences around the world.
If you receive questions at any time, for example from the publisher, the university will reply in your name.

The pilot will start on January, 31st 2019 and have a duration of six months.