Information about the WUR Open Access policy, including OA policies of major funders.

Open Access publishing

Open Access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers at no cost, as opposed to the traditional subscription model. WUR is strongly committed to Open Science and strives to make scientific publications available through Open Access. By publishing your work Open Access, you increase the transparency of your research and your scientific impact. You also enhance the use of scientific knowledge in society. Wageningen University & Research policy is to publish research results Open Access in accordance with the policy of the Dutch government.

Wageningen University & Research Open Access Policy

On 12 October 2020, the Executive Board updated the WUR Open Access policy. All WUR authors are either required or encouraged to publish scientific work Open Access whenever possible.

Peer-reviewed articles

Open Access for peer-reviewed articles is:

• required if you, as a WUR employee, are a corresponding author,
• required if you are the author of an article funded by a research funder requiring Open Access*,
• encouraged if you are a non-corresponding author*.

*Please note that funder requirements take precedence over the WUR Open Access policy.

You can make your publication freely available through one of the Open Access publishing routes. Please use the WUR Journal browser to select a scientific journal.

Refereed conference publications

Conference publications are required to be freely available to the general public. To ensure this, you can send the PDF version of the conference publication and the metadata to WUR Library, after which WUR Library will make them available in Research@WUR via the Taverne route and with an embargo period of 6 months.

PhD theses

All WUR PhD theses should become freely available through Research@WUR. A one-year embargo period, with possible extension, can be requested by the PhD candidate. You can find more information on the procedure on the PhD thesis submission page.

Funder Open Access policies

The Dutch government states that publicly funded research should be freely available and strives towards 100% Open Access. Major research funders have incorporated this ambition into their Open Access policies and requirements.

National Open Access implementations

An increasing number of research funders, national and international organisations and initiatives endorse the Open Access principles and implement Open Access policies:

• the Dutch government
• the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (UNL)
• the National Plan Open Science (NPOS)

Plan S

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing, launched by a consortium of research funders (cOAlition S), and came into effect on 1 January 2021. Plan S requires that all publications from research funded by participating organisations must be published (without an embargo and with an open licence, preferably CC BY) in either:

• Open Access journals
• Open Access platforms
• or Open Access repositories

Read more about the Plan S principles.

Open Access requirements of Plan S research funders

Many major research funders require their grant recipients to publish their publications and research data Open Access. Please have a look at your funders’ policies for the current requirements and specific details for Open Access publishing:

• NWO 
• Horizon 2020
• Horizon Europe Note: Horizon Europe recommends preregistering your research. You can find more information on preregistration here and in the informative webinar by Prof. Dr Harm Veling. Additional to Plan S requirements, Horizon Europe requires authors to immediately deposit either the published version or the peer-reviewed author's accepted manuscript into a trusted repository. 
• ERC
• ZonMw
• KNAW

Questions & support

If you would like to receive personal support from WUR Library’s Open Access specialists, please email us. We are happy to help you.