“By 2024, all scholarly publication activity in Switzerland should be OA, all scholarly publications funded by public money must be freely available on the internet.”1 With this lofty goal, the Swiss National Strategy on Open Access was adopted in January 2017. The strategy was developed by swissuniversities (the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Universities) with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). After eight years of diverse and innovative open access activities, it is now time to look back and ask: Have we been able to reach the overarching goal?
A look at the figures reveals that the answer is a resounding “No!”. For articles published in scholarly journals in 2023, the Swiss Open Access Monitor – a key output of the first strategy phase – shows an open access share of only 71%, compared with 49% in 2017.2 Although this falls short of expectations, a positive trend is visible – especially if one interprets the target of 100% not so much as a realistic benchmark but as a policy instrument for mobilizing resources and activities in this area.
Revision of the Strategy
In view of the expiry of the strategy period at the end of 2024, the authors set about revising the document in a participatory process. Within the framework of an open consultation process, all Swiss universities could review and comment on a draft of the strategy paper. A report summarizing the results of the consultation and their impact on the final text is publicly available online.3
The revised Swiss National Strategy on Open Access was published in June 2024.4 The document builds on principles set out in the first national strategy, namely, to create an open publishing system jointly, cost-neutrally, and via various pathways. The revised strategy should be seen as a continuation of the 2017 strategy that incorporates key results of recent projects and takes into account current developments in the area of open science. The goal now is to achieve a complete open access transformation in Switzerland by 2032 at the latest.
The New Swiss Vision
The revised strategy envisions the creation of a robust open access landscape. To achieve this, seven guiding principles have been defined. Based on these principles, six objectives have been set that can be reached via six interlinked pathways. The strongly nested structure of the document is symptomatic of the diverse and multi-layered objectives of the stakeholders involved. Substantively, the main focus is on developing and coordinating centralized infrastructures and services (especially for diamond and green open access), creating a supportive legal framework (secondary publication right, retention of copyright), and establishing an open access culture in the research communities as a standard for scientific work. The concrete implementation of the strategy is the responsibility of the institutions who self-commit to implement it within the framework of their own possibilities and contexts – according to the principle of personal responsibility, a virtue that is particularly highly valued in Switzerland. Furthermore, it is emphasized several times that these objectives can be achieved only through extensive inter-institutional collaborations.
The new strategic orientation heralds a phase of consolidation in which the tried-and-tested ideas of the last few years will be bundled and optimized. This means a change of perspective whereby greater responsibility for achieving the stated objectives is imposed on academic institutions than on individual researchers.
Definition of an Open Access Publication and Implications for Repositories
The definition of an open access publication anchored in the strategy is noteworthy. To be considered open access, documents must be made “immediately accessible in a machine-readable format at no charge, with no embargo, and with an open licence”.5 This is highly relevant for repositories, which in many cases do not (or are not permitted to) make green open access publications available under a Creative Commons licence. Furthermore, embargoes are widespread. Based on the aforementioned ambitious definition, a large share of the self-archived works currently available in Swiss repositories are no longer considered to be open access in the strict sense. What does this mean for repository managers? First and foremost, it means that they must engage in a lot of communication: in many cases, individual clarifications must be sought from publishers because their general policies either do not contain any statements regarding distribution under a Creative Commons licence, or they explicitly forbid it. Further consultation is also needed with the publishing authors, who ideally retain the copyright and exploitation rights in their accepted manuscripts. The Rights Retention Strategy6 provides support in this regard.
Consideration of Alternative Publication Formats
A stronger focus on alternative publication formats beyond articles in scholarly journals is clearly evident in—and is a positive noteworthy feature of—the revised strategy. The promotion of open access for long-form publications (such as books and book chapters), publications in the arts, and practice publications (e.g. professional and association journals) is specifically addressed in the strategy. The need to catch up and the great potential of such formats have been recognized. Non-profit publishing pathways such as diamond open access and institutional publishing are also key fields of action in the strategy. Bibliodiversity is an important factor for a comprehensive and stable open access landscape. However, mention is also made of the need for stronger reference to far-reaching developments in the area of research assessment and open science beyond traditional text publications.
The Outlook: Sunny with Cloudy Intervals or Foggy After All?
In discussions on and in the wording of the new strategy, there is a noticeable lack of critical engagement with the unachieved 100% target, which is now to be achieved via new pathways in the next eight years. This postponement dilutes the message and is inconsistent. Although new quantitative and qualitative indicators have been defined for the achievement of the individual objectives and will be continuously monitored at a strategic level by a designated body, success criteria such as researchers’ satisfaction with their publishing options are difficult to measure.7 Ultimately, concrete consequences should the new open access target once again not be achieved are also lacking.
As is often the case with strategy papers, many details regarding the concrete implementation of the individual objectives remain vague. The basic tone of the new open access strategy can be summarized as follows: everything is possible, nothing is ruled out. Concrete objectives will be found elsewhere. At the turn of the year, swissuniversities will publish the first calls for new open access projects.8 The funding decisions will then reveal a trend and fill the strategy with life. Swiss institutions are therefore looking curious to see what to the future with will bringtrepidation, especially in view of the recently announced radical cuts to the entire Open Science Programme as a result of the austerity measures for the Swiss federal budget.9
Autor: Nicolai Hauf,
mit wertvoller Unterstützung durch das Open-Access-Team der ZHAW Hochschulbibliothek.
1 Swiss National Strategy on Open Access (2017): https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Hochschulpolitik/Open_Access/Open_Access__strategy_final_DE.pdf
2 Journal Monitor (OAM-CH) of the Swiss Open Access Monitor: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/open-access/-2025566562?culture=en
3 Swiss National Open Access Strategy. Results of the Consultation:
https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Hochschulpolitik/Open_Access/OA-Strategy-Review-Consultation-Report.pdf
4 Swiss National Open Access Strategy. Revised in 2024:
https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Hochschulpolitik/Open_Access/Swiss-National-Open-Access-Strategy-2024-en.pdf
5 Swiss National Open Access Strategy. Revised in 2024 (p. 11)
6 Rights Retention Strategy: https://www.coalition-s.org/resources/rights-retention-strategy/
7 Swiss National Open Access Strategy. Revised in 2024 (pp. 20-21).
8 https://www.swissuniversities.ch/en/topics/open-science/open-science-programme/calls
9 See https://www.swissuniversities.ch/en/topics/open-science/open-science-programme and https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-102538.html
Suggested citation
Hauf, N. (2024). Die Schweiz setzt sich ein neues Open-Access-Ziel. open-access.network. doi.org/10.64395/nn8v4-vqj02.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).
