Portugal

The Open Access movement in Portugal is gaining strong momentum as evident from the growing interest and involvement of the Portuguese academic and scientific community.
The first initiatives were from Minho University with the creation of RepositóriUM - its institutional repository (October 2003) and the subsequent definition of a pioneering self-archiving policy (January 2005).
But in 2006 the opening of another repository on production stage (ISCTE repository in October 2006), the Open Access Declaration issued by CRUP (the Conference of Rectors of the Portuguese Universities) (November of 2006), the very successful second Open Access Conference (with more than 150 participants) held in Minho University, as well as other initiatives for creation of institutional repositories in diverse national institutions, fully illustrate the high degree of interest and development work that has been settled in Portugal.
There are 16 public universities in Portugal and combined with smaller private universities that are focused mainly on teaching, the number increases up to 22 universities. The Conference of Rectors of the Portuguese Universities, consisting of the rectors of the above-mentioned 16 public universities, has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access recommended that all universities build an institutional repository and design a policy for self-archiving.
At the time of writing, in Portugal, there are 4 institutional repositories (IRs) in a production stage, 3 in a testing stage, 1 in installation stage and several others starting the first steps towards their creation. The IRs already in production stage, combined, archive about 8700 documents (but 6700 are from just one repository).
The main driving factor for engaging with the development of IRs is the increasing awareness of the open access movement and the need to showcase the research outputs are mentioned. On the contrary, the main inhibitors are the low level of awareness on Open Access in some scientific areas and institutions and the doubts and fears with regard to the copyright situation for published research output.
Following its Declaration, the Conference of Rectors of the Portuguese Universities has set a Working Group on Open Access and developed efforts to involve representatives of governmental agencies in the discussions. The purpose was to promote OA at each Portuguese university, helping the establishment of institutional repositories and the definition of open access self-archiving policies in all of them, and the creation of a common pilot meta-repository.
A CRUP representative of was also actively involved in the European Universities Association (EUA) Open Access Working Group.
Earlier in 2008, CRUP addressed the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES) by resending the Conference of Rectors of the Portuguese Universities Declaration on Open Access and stating its support to the recommendations from the European University Association (EUA) Working Group on Open Access.
In March 2008, as the result of CRUP's, and its Open Access Working Group, efforts a project for the creation of a national meta-repository, and the establishment of IRs in all the 16 universities, was proposed and accepted by a governmental agency, UMIC, pursuing the following objectives:
- Development of the infrastructure, stimulating the creation of new institutional repositories, supporting the development of the existing ones and promoting their interconnection and interoperability;
- Supporting and stimulating the deposit of national scientific and academic literature in these repositories;
- Support to the development of services based on documents and metadata deposited in these repositories;
- Creation of a unique access point for research and access to the contents, a national repository integrated in the B-on portal, but also usable separately.
- Interconnection with the national Current Research Information System platform called DeGóis.
With regard to Open Access Journals, in 2005 a national section of the Scielo project (on Open Access publication) was announced and released. Currently, Scielo Portugal hosts 18 journals, published by Portuguese entities.
The Conference of Rectors of the Portuguese Universities (CRUP) has recommended to the Portuguese research funding organizations to implement a policy of mandatory depositing of the research output. Furthermore, CRUP generally supports the EUA Working Group recommendations, and sees their approval by the European Research Council (ERC) as an important step towards a generalized mandate on Open Access by the European Union.

The DRIVER wiki may be a useful source of further information.

Are there developments in this country that you would like to inform the DRIVER community about? If so, please visit the DRIVER wiki. There you will find guest editors' contributions to the countries pages. Information about the easy process of editing pages and how to obtain a password can be found on the wiki under "PmWiki Software". We look forward to your visit.

Last updated: 14-Nov-2008