Cris Beauchemin, Wanda Romanowski and Aïda Jaidane

Question answered by Cris Beauchemin, researcher in charge of promoting INED research work

Our publisher INED Publications plays two roles at the same time: publishing a wide range of authors, while playing the role of “producer” for other publishers as our researchers publish with their outlets. INED advises its researchers to seek conditions with other publishers that will be as favorable as the ones they enjoy at INED Publications. It should be stressed that INED Publications has revolutionized its policy in recent years to make its publications freely and immediately accessible. Whereas the French national policy targets mostly journal articles for open access, INED policy also targets entire books and book chapters. At INED Publications and for other publishers alike, our goal is to make works of scientific research freely accessible. Not necessarily at time of release, but as quickly as possible. 

Question answered by Wanda Romanowski, head of INED Publications

Since 2019, all books published at INED Publications can be consulted in full, free of charge, on the OpenEditions Books platform (HTML). And with our current digitization program we’re gradually making digital versions of older works available as well. 

Moreover, our quarterly journal Population and our four-page monthly bulletin Population & Societies are now diffused on open access immediately in both French and English on Cairn. And all our published works are freely accessible today through a range of different channels. For example, an online publication entitled European Memories of the Gulag, composed of sound recordings of brief interviews with individuals who were deported to the work camps of the former Soviet Union, is accessible directly and free of charge. Meanwhile, written presentations and analyses of the interviews are available in French, English, Russian, Polish, and in some cases Ukrainian. 

Thanks to INED’s open science policy for all these publications, authors no longer have to wait the twelve months specified by France’s 2016 "law for a digital Republic" but can file the accepted version of their contributions in an open archive immediately upon release by the publisher. 

We are also working on a project at INED Publications that will make what we publish available to non-hearing and visually impaired people. 

Question answered by  Aïda Jaidane, head of INED legal

In contrast to journal articles, there is no legal disposition enabling researchers to file their books and book chapters in an open archive. This can make it difficult for an unassisted author to ask their publisher for permission to diffuse their book chapter on ArchINED, our open archives. But it is possible—and encouraged. That’s where the legal service comes in. Prior to publication, we consult publishing agreements or agreement drafts to determine what the researcher wou­ld be committing to and advise them on different types of legal clauses to insert. We also guide authors in choosing their open-access license. And even after publication­­­ it’s still possible to modify the diffusion mode, despite the author’s initial commitment, by drawing up a model supplementary clause that will make diffusion on ArchINED possible.