IEEE Canada Board of Directors

IEEE Authors and Canada's Open Access Policy

IEEE's publication policies enable Canadian research authors to comply with requirements of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications issued in late February 2015. This policy requires free and open access (OA) to research funded by grants from any of three agencies: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The policy specifies that the public access requirements apply to articles published in peerreviewed journals. (Articles submitted to conference proceedings are not specified.) Grant recipients must acknowledge agency contributions in all peer-reviewed publications, quoting the Funding Reference Number (FRN for CIHR or Application ID for NSERC, SSHRC). Canada's policy requires that grant recipients must make their work publicly available in one of two ways, both of which are compatible with IEEE's author posting policy:

1. Publication in "Gold" OA Journals
   From Tri-Agency OA Policy: "Grant recipients can publish in a journal that offers immediate open access or that offers open access on its website within 12 months. Some journals require authors to pay article processing charges (APCs) to make manuscripts freely available upon publication. The cost of publishing in open access journals is an eligible expense under the Use of Grant Funds."
   • IEEE policy: Sometimes called "gold" open access, payment of an APC to make an article freely available immediately upon publication is available in several new, fully open IEEE journals. IEEE's traditional journals also provide gold OA for individual articles through a program called "hybrid" open access. (See IEEE Open Access Publishing Options for more information.)
2. Deposit in Online Repositories
   From Tri-Agency OA Policy: "Grant recipients may meet requirements by depositing their final, peer-reviewed manuscript into an institutional or disciplinary repository that will make the manuscript freely accessible within 12 months of publication. It is the responsibility of the grant recipient to determine which publishers allow authors to retain copyright and/or allow authors to archive journal publications in accordance with funding agency policies."
   • IEEE policy: Authors' self-archiving of their articles, sometimes called "green" open access, is permitted under IEEE's author posting policy. PSPB Operations Manual Section 8.1.9 states: "Authors and/or their employers shall have the right to post the accepted version of IEEE-copyrighted articles on their own personal servers or the servers of their institutions or employers without permission from IEEE ... [and] IEEE allows its authors to follow mandates of agencies that fund the author's research by posting accepted versions of their articles in the agencies' publicly accessible repositories." Authors may deposit their own version (or "postprint") of a peer-reviewed article in a publicly accessible repository operated by their institution or in any repository that is acceptable to the CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC. (See IEEE FAQ for more information.)

Implementation Dates
The CIHR updated its policy in January 2013 to require public access to its funded research, and the policy applies to all CIHR grants awarded 1 Jan. 2008 and onward. For research funded in whole or in part by NSERC or SSHRC, the new policy applies to all grants awarded 1 May 2015 and onward.

Open Data Requirements
Of the three agencies covered by the policy, only CIHR requires that research authors make their supporting data publicly available. CIHR requires that authors deposit "bioinformatics, atomic, and molecular coordinate data into the appropriate public database (e.g. gene sequences deposited in GenBank) immediately upon publication of research results." Examples of research outputs and corresponding public repositories are provided in the Annex. Funded researchers are required to retain original data for five years after the end of the grant.

Enforcement
The grant recipient is responsible for ensuring adherence with the Tri-Agency policy. According to the Tri-Agency web site, "in the event of an alleged breach of agency policy, the process outlined in Section 6.1 of the Tri-Agency Framework: Responsible Conduct of Research may be followed."

Other Online Resources Publishing Documents for OA Authors - IEEE's Open Access Publishing Agreement and the CC BY License

SHERPA-RoMEO - Index of publishers' policies

For further information on IEEE policies, please e-mail ieee-open-access@ieee.org

Membership Dues in Special Circumstances

IEEE realizes that economic circumstances may impact some members' ability to pay the full amount of IEEE membership dues. For this reason, the following special circumstance categories have been established. Special circumstances are not available to Student members. Only one category may be claimed in any year.

-  Minimum Income Provision
-  Retired Provision
-  Unemployed Provision
-  Permanently Disabled