You share, we take care!

The ambition of the Netherlands is to achieve 100% open access. Agreements have been made with many publishers about open access publishing. Unfortunately, this is not possible for all types of publications or journals. However, Dutch copyright law offers an alternative.

Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (Taverne Amendment) allows researchers to share short scientific works (e.g. articles & book chapters), regardless of any restrictive publishers' guidelines.

Taverne Amendment

"The maker of a short scientific work, the research for which has been paid for in whole or in part by Dutch public funds, shall be entitled to make that work available to the public for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work." (Dutch Copyright Act 2015)

The Dutch universities decided to give open access an extra boost from 2019 by starting a pilot early 2019. On the basis of the Taverne Amendment, the publishers' versions of short scientific works can be made available after six months via the university repository. It is important that the researcher explicitly asks for this. In 2020 Dutch Universities and University Medical Centers started implementing the Taverne amendment widely. The way in which this is done differs per instituion. This article sets out the experiences with the pilot.

Conditions for participation

The university libraries can make your publication available in the repository. The period of publication after six months applies under the following conditions:

The publication is funded wholly or partly with Dutch public funds. That is the case if the work was done for a university or UMC; see also the point below.
The maker(s) has/have an employment contract with an institution affiliated to the UNL; the makers can be both authors and co-authors.
It is a short scientific work; this has the length of a scientific article or book chapter in an edited collection.

How does it work?

Contact your university library if you want to participate.
The university library will verify the conditions with you and provide additional information to make the publication available in the repository.
Your short scientific work is made open access available in the repository of your institution; freely accessible and to download/print for personal use only. Any use of the publication other than authorized under copyright law is prohibited. You can share the (perma)link to the work with scientists and audiences around the world, not the PDF itself.
If you receive questions at any time, for example from the publisher, the university will reply in your name.
From January 1, 2020, the UNL will roll out the use of the Taverne amendment widely within the affiliated universities. Contact your own local contact point (see below) for more information about conditions and implementation.