From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 14:14:45 +0100

The sixth Q&A in a series exploring the current state of Open Access
has been published. On this occasion the questions are answered by
Eloy Rodrigues, Portuguese librarian and Director of the University of
Minho’s Documentation Services.

Who better to describe what Rodrigues has contributed to the cause
than de facto leader of the Open Access movement, Peter Suber? “Eloy
Rodrigues led the effort to adopt an OA mandate at the University of
Minho in December 2004,” he explains. “The Minho policy was one of the
first two OA mandates anywhere, which makes Eloy one of the first
among the effective OA advocates anywhere.”

Suber adds, “His influence has continued to grow over the years, for
example, as a leader in the Portugal Open Access Science Repository
(Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal or RCAAP)
project, a member of the European University Association Working Group
on Open Access, Chairman of the COAR Working Group on the
Interoperability of Open Access Repositories, and a participant in the
10th anniversary meeting of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.”

Above all, Rodrigues’ work has shown that, when implemented correctly,
Green OA is the quickest and surest way for a university to make its
research freely available. This November the University of Minho’s
institutional repository (RepositóriUM) will be ten years old. During
its lifetime the number of items deposited in the repository
(articles, conference papers, working papers, theses and
dissertations, etc.) has grown from a couple of hundred to more than
23,000. Compliance with the University of Minho’s OA mandate is
currently approaching 70 percent.

But how does Rodrigues view the current state of OA, and what does he
feel still needs to be done? To find out, read the Q&A here:

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/eloy-rodrigues-on-state-of-open-access.html

Richard Poynder