Plans for research achievements to be published without delay: Specific plans provided at the CSTI Meeting held on October 19

The expert panel of the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI) provided draft plans, which will obligate relevant parties to enable open access (OA) to research achievements (documentation and data), starting with the publicly funded new research projects for Competitive Research Funds in 2025. The plans are to be authorized shortly.

Successful applicants for publicly funded new research projects will be obliged to publish their documentation and verify data in the repository of an appropriate organization after posting them for an academic publication. In addition, the plans include the reorganization and refurbishment of research DX platforms (research data backbone system and preprint server) as the means for free publication for researchers. Furthermore, the plans explicitly include the improvement of the value of organizational repositories in academia, enhancement of strength for publishing research achievements, support for the formation of a system for collective bargaining by academia with academic publishing companies, and collaboration with G7 members.

The plans also clarify that OA should be used to strengthen the publication of research results, and that the cost of OA should not suppress existing research funds or the number of successful applicants for those funds. However, publication in organizational repositories will require some effort by researchers. In the aforementioned panel, there were various discussions, such as the following: "It would cause negative effects if the researchers were to lose their research time to cope with OA."; "To suppress the burden on the researchers, we may need something like NIH's PubMed."; "It will be necessary to manage the system to authorize OA if a research achievement is posted on a preprint server." and "It may be necessary to review our evaluation system, while there is a global movement to evaluate the reorganization of research data as one of the achievements by researchers."

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is planning to survey the status of OA at each college and university in the next fiscal year as the foundation for planning the specificity of new operations.