You are here: Home / open-access

IARC Open Access Policy


Definition of Open Access

The International Agency for Research on Cancer supports and encourages the principles of open access—scholarly and scientific literature which is accessible online, free of price and subscription barriers and free of most copyright and licensing barriers. 1


Rationale for Open Access

The Agency, as described in its Statute and as a publicly-funded instrument of the United Nations, is committed to the dissemination of its research. In keeping with this commitment, the Open Access Policy demonstrates the value the Agency places on its research and the unrestricted dissemination of its research outputs through publication.

Open Access to IARC research findings will ensure that key stakeholders or any other interested constituencies are able to access, use and benefit from its work. Open Access will also benefit the Agency and its scientists by the greater visibility and impact of the research produced by IARC scientists and their collaborators.


Scope and Constraints

This policy establishes the Agency’s expectations relating to Open Access of research findings published in peer-reviewed journals. The policy applies when the lead or corresponding author is an Agency author or when the Agency takes a lead role in the project (e.g. funds the research).

The policy recognizes that a move to Open Access for the Agency is a process and will be balanced against other priorities such as publishing in journals where the work will have most impact.

Open Access to other types of IARC publications, including works published by IARC itself, is equally important but is not covered within the scope of this policy.


Statement of Policy

The goals of this policy are to ensure the broadest possible barrier-free access to the Agency’s research, to facilitate reuse of IARC authored publications and to make provision for long-term preservation and free access to IARC research findings. Open Access to IARC research can be achieved through complementary approaches whereby:

The Agency strongly encourages its authors to:

A. Publish in open access journals
B. Publish in subscription-based journals under the Open Access article option
C. Deposit an electronic version of the final accepted manuscript (postprint) in PubMed Central or an appropriate institutional repository immediately upon acceptance. Metadata must be exposed from time of deposit and full-text no later than12 months
D. Publish under a license (such as the Creative Commons IGO license) that accords with the principle of Open Access being free of most copyright barriers

Additionally, the Agency expects authors to:

E. Retain significant author rights relating to published research
F. Inform collaborators of this policy and advocate to ensure co-authored outputs are Open Access publications
G. Include the costs of open-access charges, as an estimate, in its application to funders for project support


It is the responsibility of IARC authors to comply with this policy as well as the policies of funders and other grant awarding bodies linked to specific IARC co-authored publications.



1 Definition of Open Access. Berlin Declaration. Max Planck Society. http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/mpgopen-access-policy/ Accessed May 30th 2012