3 February 2020

The national ‘Taverne amendment’ pilot, launched by the Dutch universities in 2019 to give added impetus to open access, has officially been completed. For this pilot, the Dutch universities used Article 25fa of the Copyright Act (the Taverne amendment) to allow the published version of an article, chapter or conference paper, reporting on research that was paid for by public funds, to become available as open access after a six-month embargo. An important aim in formulating these principles was to test the scope of Article 25fa of the Copyright Act. Researchers at Leiden University were among those who took part in the national pilot, although it did not include the LUMC.

The pilot at Leiden University was successful. At the national level, the permitted participation rate of researchers was set at 5%, and this percentage was achieved. In addition, all faculties were well represented. At Leiden University, 74 researchers took part in the pilot in 2019, out of a national total of over 600. During the pilot, nearly 300 Leiden University publications were made available as open access via Scholarly Publications with a national total of more than 2,800. Publishers did not take any legal action during this time.

The Taverne pilot has now been completed, and its principles have been definitively adopted by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) and the board of the National Programme for Open Science (NPOS). These principles include the expiry of an embargo after six months, so that all published articles, chapters and conference papers in the university’s repository can become available as open access from that time. Leiden University is currently working on designing a simple procedure for broad roll-out. We expect this to be introduced later this year, making it easy for staff of Leiden University (excluding LUMC) to use Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act.

Implementation of the Taverne amendment is in line with a wide range of actions to encourage open access and is part of Leiden University’s open access policy and the Sector Agreement concluded in 2018 between the VSNU and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).

If you have any questions about open access, please contact openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl.

Download: Pilot evaluatie rapport.