(27 Jan 2025) The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and CHORUS have joined forces to support Japan’s move toward a national open access policy, which is set to take effect in April 2025. At the recent Japan Library Fair on November 20, 2024, the organizations hosted the CHORUS/JST Forum, titled “Many Paths to Open Access,” bringing together six expert speakers to discuss strategies for advancing open access and ensuring compliance with Japan’s forthcoming policy.
Japan’s National Open Science Policy mandates that peer-reviewed articles and their underlying data resulting from grants by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), JST, and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) must be open access upon publication. This policy positions Japan as a leader in adopting a national strategy for open science, requiring institutions, libraries, and publishers to align with these standards.
The CHORUS/JST Forum provided insights into workflows and services designed to help libraries and research administrators navigate the transition. CHORUS’ monitoring tools and JST’s platforms, including J-STAGE, Jxiv, and the J-STAGE Data repository, were highlighted as key resources for ensuring compliance. These platforms enable access to peer-reviewed articles and associated data, meeting the policy’s requirements for open access.
Expert speakers at the forum offered diverse perspectives on open access solutions. Representatives from two major publishers discussed various models, including Subscribe to Open (S2O), transformative agreements, and read-and-publish approaches. Colette Bean from the American Physiological Society and Katsu Arai from Wiley shared their experiences in supporting open access through society-led initiatives and commercial publishing models.
Library leaders Yuta Kobayashi of Chiba University and Justin Shearer of the University of Melbourne detailed institutional approaches to open science. They emphasized the importance of collaboration between libraries and research administration to provide researchers with effective open access options while ensuring alignment with institutional and national goals.
JST’s Soichi Kubota showcased the agency’s platforms that support scholarly communication in Japan, enabling compliance with open science principles through seamless publication and data-sharing workflows. Yutaka Hayashi from the National Institute of Informatics (NII) closed the forum by highlighting NII’s initiatives to enhance repository capacity and monitor research outputs across institutions.
The CHORUS/JST partnership reflects Japan’s commitment to fostering a robust open science ecosystem. By supporting diverse pathways to open access, JST and CHORUS aim to ease the burden on researchers and ensure that the benefits of open research practices extend to the global scholarly community.
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