Belgian Open Access legislation

In 2018, a new OA paragraph (§ 2/1) was added to article XI.196 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law.

The Belgian OA paragraph states that

• Authors of scientific journal articles resulting from publicly funded research retain the right to make the accepted manuscript freely available in OA after an embargo period of 12 months (humanities and social sciences) or 6 months (other scientific disciplines).
• Authors retain this right, even if they have transferred or exclusively licensed their economic rights granted by copyright to the journal publisher.

Significance of the Belgian OA paragraph

• It allows you to bypass publisher restrictions on self-archiving of journal articles by ensuring that you retain certain rights as an author.
• It makes it easier to disseminate scholarly publications in OA via the 'green' route, including via Biblio.
• It helps you comply with the OA requirements of (certain) research funders.

Conditions

The OA paragraph in Belgian law only applies if certain conditions are met.

Scientific journal articles

• Only scientific journal articles can be made publicly available based on the Belgian OA paragraph.
• It does not apply to non-scientific articles or to other publication types such as books, book chapters or conference proceedings in books.

Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version

• Only the AAM version of a journal article (i.e. the version after peer review that is accepted for publication) can be made publicly available based on the OA paragraph in Belgian law. It does not allow OA to the Version of Record (i.e. the publisher's final version).
• If the original article was published in an OA journal, you can make the Version or Record freely available to anyone. In this case, you don't need to rely on Belgian law to make it OA.

At least 50% of public funds

The journal article must result from research funded for at least 50% by public means. The geographic origins of the funding do not matter; they can be Belgian or foreign.

Link with Belgium

There has to be a connection with Belgium. For example, the author has the Belgian nationality or works at an institution located in Belgium, the research was funded by a funder in Belgium, etc.

Source of first publication

Making the AAM publicly available is only allowed if the source of first publication is mentioned.

Your rights as an author

Green OA

You can make your accepted journal article manuscript publicly and freely available via an OA repository, such as Biblio.

After embargo

• You can provide OA to your AAM after an embargo period.
• The OA paragraph in Belgian law allows a maximum embargo of 12 months for articles in social sciences and humanities, and 6 months for articles in other scientific disciplines, after the date of first publication.
• The embargo period can be shorter if thus stipulated in the publishing agreement.

Reuse licence

• The OA paragraph in Belgian law does not imply that you also retain the right to make the AAM version of a journal article available for reuse under a licence of your own choosing.
• What (if any) reuse licence is allowed for your manuscript, likely depends on the publishing agreement or the publisher's policy on licences for self-archived content.

Imperative law

• The OA paragraph in Belgian law prevails over any publishing agreements you have signed.
• The publisher cannot make you waive your right, for example via a contract clause. Such a clause is not enforceable.

Retroactive application

You can apply the OA paragraph in Belgian law retroactively, to make articles published before 2018 publicly and freely available online.

How to make use of your rights

• Hold on to (or get) the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version of your journal article.
• Check that any co-authors consent to making it publicly available in Biblio.
• Deposit the AAM in Biblio.
• Make sure to include the DOI of the published version in the publication's Biblio record.
• Set the access level to 'Embargoed Access' and indicate that it will change to 'Open Access' after expiration of the embargo.

For scientific journal articles published in 2023 or later, Ghent University policy

• Requires you to deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version (unless the original article was published directly in OA, in which case you can deposit the Version of Record).
• Assumes that you give permission and have any co-author's permission to make your AAM in Biblio publicly available in accordance with Belgian OA legislation, unless you explicitly request an opt-out.

More about Ghent University's policy on scholarly publishing