Canada's Tri-Agencies Release 2026 Open Access Policy: Funded Papers Must Be Free Immediately from 2027
In Ottawa, Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council jointly released the revised Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications (2026) on October 5. Under the new policy, peer-reviewed articles from grants awarded on or after January 1, 2027 must be freely available to the public immediately upon publication, with no embargo period.
Articles must be deposited in a Canadian institutional repository or a trusted Canadian platform such as Érudit, PKP Open Journal Systems or Scholars Portal, and released under an open licence. Rights retention by authors is built into the policy, which also delivers commitments under the Roadmap for French-language research and emphasizes bilingual dissemination.
The policy applies to grants and Chair awards made on or after January 1, 2027, excluding student scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships. Research funded between May 1, 2015 and December 31, 2026 remains under the 2015 policy.
The three agencies are also requiring funded institutions to publish an institutional open access strategy. University libraries across Canada issued guidance the same day to help researchers prepare for the 2027 requirements.
Source: Tri-Agency (CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 多伦多大学罗巴茨研究图书馆。/ The John P. Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto. (Photo: Maksim Sokolov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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