Scholar, the Institutional Repository of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) succeeds SOTIS, a repository developed by this School in 2011 in order to promote and increase the impact and visibility of scientific production of its teaching staff and researchers.
At the international and national context of the Open Science movement, the development of a renovated repository prevailed, so that it could integrate the Open Access Scientific Repositories of Portugal project (RCAAP) and answer more effectively to national and international guidelines on scientific publication and the sharing of knowledge arising from the results of research projects. These guidelines express support to open science principles and adherence and regulated research funding principles.
Open Access to Scientific Publications refers to unrestricted access to publications resulting from research, development and innovation (IDI) projects, subject to scientific review or validation processes, including formal peer review processes. Any user must be able to freely access these publications in electronic format at any time and without any content restrictions, free of charge. Open access publishing must also allow the content of publications to be searched and reused, both manually and using automatic tools. Reuse must be subject to correct attribution of authorship and origin.
In order to comply with the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)’s policy and Open Science practices provided for in Horizon Europe, considering the strategic interest of IST and its own or associated research units in promoting research results in open access and taking into account the need to maximize the effort that each one has to spend for this purpose, the following Institutional Open Access Policy is defined:
Authors’ responsibility
a. Publications include: articles published in scientific journals subject to peer review; communications or other documents presented at conferences or other events for the dissemination of knowledge; books and book parts; master’s and PhD theses; and other types of scientific documents, such as working papers, scientific and technical reports, databases, software, models, algorithms and work methodologies;
b. Teaching staff and researchers must, in accordance with the provisions of funding entities and the open science policy adopted by the respective supervisory entity, deposit in the Repository the final version of publications which are subject to peer review or other processes of scientific review or validation;
c. The final version is understood as the publisher’s version, when allowed, or the author’s final version accepted for publication, including all modifications introduced in the peer review process but without the final formatting by the publisher (postprint);
d. Depositing publications should be made as soon as possible, preferably at the moment of acceptance for publication or immediately after formal publication;
e. Every publication resulting from projects with open access funding sources must reference this information in the Repository;
f. For scientific publications subject to Article Processing Charges (APC) with funding granted by funding entities, it is mandatory for the scientific journal itself to make the final version available in open access, deposit this version in other repositories other than the scientific journal or publisher, and apply the Creative Commons CC-BY License;
g. In scientific journals, open access to the full text of publications should be allowed as soon as possible, but embargo periods imposed by publishers may be considered: a maximum duration of 12 months for publications in the social sciences, humanities or arts and 6 months for publications in other scientific areas;
h. Books or book parts resulting from or integrated into IDI projects, funded in whole or in part by FCT or other funding entities, must always be deposited by the authors in the final version, until the date of its publication. Embargo periods for open access availability are allowed, with a maximum duration of 18 months, counted from the formal publication date;
i. Master’s and PhD theses must be deposited in the Institutional Repository in accordance with Decree-Law No. 115/2013, of August 7th, within a maximum period of 60 days after the degree is awarded:
- For Master’s theses carried out in a business environment, a confidentiality and intellectual property regulation agreement must accompany them. The title, abstract, and keywords cannot be confidential and must be entered into the Repository, as well as the part of the Master’s thesis text that will become public;
- In the case of PhD theses resulting from or integrated in IDI projects, embargo periods for open access availability are allowed, with a maximum duration of 36 months from the date of award of the doctoral degree;
- For different situations, the conditions of access are settled by the author in the Declaration of Acceptance of Disclosure, Publication and/or Assignment of Copyright (Declaração de Aceitação de Divulgação, Publicação e/ou Cedência de Direitos de Autor). However, free access to the document is recommended.
j. Publications resulting from IDI projects, such as scientific and technical reports, databases, software, models, algorithms and work methodologies, must be made available according to the approved consortium data management plan (when applicable), project schedules and established consortium agreements. For specialized digital objects, such as databases, software, or similar, publication may occur in specialized alternative repositories designated for them, and whenever possible, they should be referenced in the institutional repository through metadata;
k. The embargo may be applied to access but not to deposit. When depositing the file, the metadata becomes available in the Repository, with a temporal indication of the embargo period. After this period, the document will be available in open access.
Instituto Superior Técnico’s responsibility
Information Technology Services are responsible for
a. Ensuring the functioning of the Repository;
b. Ensuring the interoperability of the Repository with other systems and internal or external information services (such as the RCAAP Portal, OpenAIRE, ORCID, Ciência Vitae, etc.);
c. Establishing and ensuring the necessary procedures for the digital preservation of content and ensure permanent access to the deposited material;
d. Providing statistics on the use of deposited documents (views and downloads);
e. Ensuring the deposit and access to the Master’s and PhD theses defended at IST.
Library Services are responsible for
a. Verifying and validating the metadata of documents submitted, with the support of Teaching and Research Units;
b. Supporting and clarifying doubts in the publication deposit process;
c. Supporting and clarifying copyright-related issues;
d. Promoting dissemination and training actions for users;
e. Supporting relevant institutional initiatives aimed at maximizing the public benefit of scientific knowledge.
Teaching and Research Units are responsible for
a. Appointing one or more individuals responsible for managing and updating the metadata for the Unit;
b. Supporting their teaching staff and researchers in self-archiving their scientific publications to ensure compliance with the Open Access Policy imposed by funding entities and adopted by the Institution;
c. Verifying and confirming the correct affiliation of its members.
Standardization of Institutional Affiliation
a. It is mandatory that authors correctly affiliate themselves institutionally in all publication circumstances.
Instituto Superior Técnico will establish monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance with this policy. The present document will be subject to regular review whenever there is a legislative change in this matter.
Instituto Superior Técnico, July 7th, 2022.
Document approved by the Scientific Council (Conselho Científico) on July 6th, 2022, and by the Governing Board (Conselho de Gestão) on July 7th, 2022.
Translated in December 2023 by the Técnico Library.
- In November 2006, and after endorsing the Berlin Declaration, the Portuguese National Conference of Rectors (CRUP) issued a Declaration expressing its support to the Open Access movement, recommending the creation of Institutional Repositories in every university and the establishment of institutional policies for depositing scientific and academic publications. More recently, the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) issued on May 5th 2014 an Open Access Policy establishing the obligation to make publications resulting from the R&D projects funded by FCT available in open access.
- At the international level, we highlight the European Commission’s Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Horizon 2020, from December 11th 2013, which establish the obligation to deposit all scientific publications resulting from this funding entity in open access. More recently, in 2018, Plan S, a project funded by an international consortium of open access research funders, aims to ensure that every publication resulting from publicly funded research is published in open access journals or platforms or made available through open access repositories, without embargo.
- Archiving of text, sound, image and video files.
- Also known, in portuguese, as Custos de Processamento da Publicação.
- The Creative Commons CC-BY License allows sharing (copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format) and adapting (transforming and creating from the material) for any purpose, even commercial, as long as due credit is given to the author, a link to the license is provided and changes, if made, are indicated (FCT, 2014).
- These embargoes are related to the deadline for mandatory maintenance of the price of books established in the Decree-Law no. 216/2000, of September 2nd, known as the Fixed Book Price Law (Lei do Preço Fixo do Livro). This embargo deadline may change if the Law changes.
- See Article 50 from Decree-Law No. 115/2013, of August 7th.
- In Dispatch No. 2967/2021, which regulates PhD Theses at IST, Annex C, Point 6 states that candidates must submit “a digital copy to be deposited in RCAAP, operated by FCT”.
- See Points 5 and 7 from IST Master’s Thesis Regulations (Regulamento das Dissertações de Mestrado do IST).
- See model of the Declaration.
- The main metadata from a publication are: title of the publication, author, title of the journal, abstract, description, keywords, date, publisher, Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), DOI, ISBN and collections information when applicable.