The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has just announced
the official adoption of the Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate
it had proposed last year: http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/34846.html
This is the 31st Green OA Mandate adopted worldwide, but the 1st in
North America. (Indeed, only one North American University --
l'Universite du Quebec a Montreal -- has signed the Berlin Declaration.)
In all, 14 departmental and institutional self-archiving mandates
plus 17 funder mandates have so far been adopted worldwide. In addition,
2 large multi-institutional mandates (Brazil and Europe) are in the proposal
stage, as are 4 proposed funder mandates (two of them in the US and very
big).
UK is still substantially in the lead for OA mandates adopted, but if
the pending US and European mandate proposals are adopted, OA will
have prevailed unstoppably worldwide.
The next big growth area will be the sleeping giant of university OA
mandates, fueled by both the OA movement and the Institutional Repository
movement. The UK universities and the European ones are moving in
concerted directions here. Time for US university provosts (who signed
in support of the FRPAA Green OA mandate proposal) to go into action
too!