Keynote speaker Ulrich Herb

Graduate sociologist, PhD in information science, head of the publication and research support department at the Saarland University and State Library (Germany), Open Access Coordinator for the federal state Saarland, member of various working groups on academic publishing, board member of the Learned Society for Information Science in the German-Speaking countries, Associate of scidecode science consulting (Berlin), freelance consultant for OUROUK consultant (Paris).

Balancing Aspirations and Outcomes: A Critical Look at Open Access Policies and Their Evolution

The first Open Access policy ever registered in the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP) was introduced by the School of Electronics & Computer Science at the University of Southampton on February 5, 2003. Since then, the subjects (who sets the policies?), the addressees (whose actions are these policies targeting?), the objects (what is to be made openly available? e.g., peer-reviewed publications, data, and software), and the goals (what is the motivation for enacting the policy?) of these policies have changed significantly. Depending on the configuration of subject, addressee, object, and goals, there are notable differences, particularly regarding the binding nature of the measures and their impact, the quantification of which remains difficult. This presentation aims to trace the development of these policies and examine the factors contributing to their success, particularly in the context of current debates on Diamond Open Access and the reform of research evaluation.