Argentina Passes Open Access Act For Publicly Funded Research

The Congress of Argentina recently passed a landmark law making publicly funded science and technology research publications free and open access.

On 13 November, the Argentinian Congress passed a law (No. 26.899, Creating Institutional Open Access Digital Repositories, Owned or Shared) establishing that all institutions belonging to the National Science and Technology System (SNCYT, according to its acronym in Spanish) that receive public funds (partly or entirely) shall create free and open access institutional digital repositories where all the scientific and technological publications (which includes journal articles, technical and scientific papers, theses, etc.) and research data must be available.

The free and open access institutional digital repositories shall be compatible with international interoperability standards, and ensure free open access to the documents and research data (Article 4).