For several decades, the scientific community has been facing more and more disproportionate cost increases from many scholarly journals. The reasons for this so-called “serial crisis” are complex, but an essential factor is the quasi-monopoly of several publishers. Researchers, working in the environment of financially secure institutes, often do not face the problem directly. However the visibility, re-use and impact of their scientific research suffer from the limitation of access by price-barriers. Through this lens, it is clear that open access to research results should be enforced.

The results of research financed by public funds should be published electronically so that they are freely and immediately available without charge and can thus be reused by third parties, since they are considered as a public good. Several studies have shown that OA helps boost the visibility of research among researchers, the media and the general public. It thus promotes the transfer of knowledge, the rationalisation of resources and the efficiency of research, while accelerating scientific progress. Increasingly, OA is regarded as a new standard of excellence for scientific research, offering new opportunities for funding, partnerships and jobs, most appropriately so in countries with a particularly knowledge-based economy like Switzerland.

In Switzerland, several institutions connected to scientific research and its publication have developed OA policies:

• The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) requires that, in principle, all publications relative to research it funded should be published in OA.
• The Swiss Academy of humanities and social sciences (SAGW) requires from all publishers receiving its financial support that they develop an OA policy before 2020.
• Swissuniversities, commissioned by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, launched a Swiss National Strategy on Open Access that aimes at harmonizing the OA policies of Swiss universities, coordinate financial resources, promote alternative forms of publication, and communicating and raising awareness about OA. The aim of the strategy is that all scholarly publications funded by public money be Open Access by 2024 .
  The Action plan to implement the National strategy has been approved by swissuniversities the Swiss conference of higher education institutions, and is thus officially in force.
  USI as well will be concerned by the proposed measures, and it is likely that its researchers will soon be requested to comply to new OA requirements.