Funding Agency Mandates

Many funding agencies require the results of funded research to be made available open access, so they can be read and shared as broadly as possible.

The Government of Canada's 2026 Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications applies to research funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) after January 1, 2027. Research funded prior to this date is subject to the 2015 Tri-Agency Open Access Policy.

To comply with the 2015 Government of Canada policy, grant recipients can either publish in an open access journal or deposit their peer reviewed journal publication in an institutional repository, such as UAL's ERA.

To comply with the 2026 Government of Canada policy, grant recipients must make their peer reviewed journal publication freely available in a Canadian institutional repository / trusted Canadian platform immediately, at the date of publication. More information can be found here.

For information about funding agency mandates in other countries, visit the funder's website or consult the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP).