HAL is a key part of the implementation of the open science policy promoted by several French funding agencies, who have joined forces to take a coordinated approach.
The National Research Agency (ANR), the Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (Anses), the National Cancer Institute (INCa), the National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (Inserm/ANRS), the Agency for Ecological Transition (Ademe), followed by the Foundation for Medical Research (FRM), have joined forces with a shared roadmap to promote open access to scientific publications.
This joint initiative aims to promote the unrestricted dissemination of research results and generalise access to knowledge, as well as harmonise practices for the benefit of scientific communities (see our 2022 webinar ‘Open Science talk‘ for more information on this topic).
Following on from the ANR’s HAL portal created in 2020, two agencies have been rolling out their own portals since this summer to promote publications resulting from the projects they fund: Ademe (portal) and Anses for the national Environment-Health-Work research programme (PNR EST portal) which Anses coordinates.
Any deposit in HAL containing a reference to a project from these two agencies (entered in the Funding section of the deposit form) is displayed on this portal, regardless of the deposit interface used (HAL, HAL-Theses or the institutional portal of a university or research organisation).
This specific metadata allows researchers to fulfil these agencies’ open access requirements for publications. HAL synchronises project data with the datasets deposited by these agencies on data.gouv.fr. This workflow, developed jointly by the CCSD and the ANR, improves reliability and facilitates traceability for the agencies, enabling them to retrieve lists of publications for their internal information systems.
Interoperability HAL and appelsprojetsrecherche.fr
The network of funding agencies also coordinates the appelsprojetsrecherche.fr website, which is aimed at research stakeholders. It provides unified access to current and upcoming calls for projects and applications, offering greater visibility of funding opportunities. All applicants can automatically populate their list of publications using HAL: by entering their ORCID ID, the website queries HAL and populates users’ profiles (see FAQs).
By uniting the efforts of funding agencies, HAL has become a real cornerstone of the open science ecosystem. Beyond enabling the submission, dissemination, and visibility of scientific publications, it ensures full traceability of research outcomes linked to funding.