Open Access and Ethics Policy

Open access policy

The AXA Research Fund believes that providing free and unrestricted access to the scientific outputs of the research projects it supports to be a fundamental part of its mission. Since July 1st, 2016, an open access policy is effective for all new agreements and granted funding. To build on best existing practices in this area, this policy closely follows the guidelines instituted and recently updated by the European Research Council.

Considering the fast evolution of current debates and the diversity of approaches between disciplines, no binding commitment to this policy will be requested from the Chairholder.

To comply with the open access policy, the AXA Research Fund:

  • Requests that an electronic copy of any research article, monograph or other research publication that is supported by the AXA Research Fund be deposited in a suitable repository immediately upon publication. Open access should be provided as soon as possible and, in any case, no later than six months after the official publication date. For publications in the Social Sciences and Humanities domain a delay of up to twelve months is acceptable.

  • Strongly encourages funded researchers to use publishing venues and discipline relevant repositories for their publications that ensure that the publications are publicly discoverable and accessible as soon as possible, and in places that enable long term preservation. If there is no appropriate repository, researchers should make their publications available in institutional repositories or in centralized ones.

  • Reminds researchers supported by the AXA Research Fund that open access fees are eligible costs that can be charged against AXA Research Fund grants, provided they are incurred during the duration of the project.

  • Asks host institutions to cover open access fees of any research publications supported by the AXA Research Fund arising after the end of the project

The AXA Research Fund furthermore strongly encourages its researchers to:

  • Retain files of all the research data they have produced and used during their work, and that they be prepared to share these data with other researchers whenever they are not bound by copyright restrictions, confidentiality requirements, or contractual clauses.

  • Use discipline-specific repositories for their research data. If there is no appropriate discipline specific repository, researchers should make their research data available in institutional repositories or in centralized ones.

  • Establish good research data management in accordance with the current best practices in their respective fields and to share their data with other researchers in a responsible way.

Ethics policy

Research projects supported by the AXA Research Fund must conform to the AXA Group Compliance and Ethics Guide which excludes (but is not limited to):

  • Research violating national regulations

  • Research with potentially dangerous environmental impacts

  • Research relying on the artificial production of highly infectious pathogens with potential for large scale harmful/lethal effects for humans and research involving gain of function

  • Biomedical research conducted without the fully informed consent of the participant

  • Research on embryonic stem cells (incl. animal, with inferred subsequent human application)

  • Research processing private personal data without the informed consent of the concerned parties (incl. genetic information)

  • Research activities aiming at human cloning

Cases of scientific misconduct such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or misrepresentation of data will be considered as breaches of fundamental ethical principles and proposals concerned will be excluded.