Six year periods 2023 call for proposals advances the deposit of research results

The recent call for the evaluation of research activity (sexenios de investigación) included as a requirement, in a decisive manner, compliance with article 37 of Law 17/2022, of 5 September, which amends Law 14/2011, of 1 June, on Science, Technology and Innovation (LCTI), and article 12 of Organic Law 2/2023, of 22 March, on the University System (LOSU), which make mandatory the deposit in open access repositories of those research results from publicly funded activity. 

In order to analyse the impact of the inclusion, for the first time, of this requirement to comply with the LCTI and the LOSU, the Network of Spanish University and Scientific Libraries (REBIUN), associated to the R&D&I sectorial of CRUE, has carried out a survey to the university libraries belonging to this network, obtaining a response from 62 of them (81.6% of the total).

The libraries confirm that the total number of research results deposited in their institutional repositories has increased by 8.14% in just three months (from mid-November to mid-February), with a total of 1,054,533 documents that guarantee their digital preservation.

In addition, open access repositories have added 66,861 documents, which represents a 6.6 % growth in the number of works deposited in institutional repositories without any type of restriction on access to them and with open licences, which lift most of the restrictions derived from traditional publishing licences and publishing contracts. 

Also noteworthy is the growth in dataset repositories, which have increased by 15 %, adding 394 new contributions.

None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of the library services of the universities and research centres that administer most of the repositories and which have provided support and advice to 10,343 people for the evaluation of 41,850 publications, not only in the deposit phase but also, as they have been doing for years, in the use of metrics and sources of information for the preparation of the applications themselves.

ANECA, as it has stated on numerous occasions, is grateful for the excellent work carried out and its permanent collaboration with all the staff of Libraries and Research Support Services and the members of REBIUN, with whom it shares the defence of institutional repositories and open science.