In France, the final text of a new law on Open Access has been adopted on June 29, 2016. On July 20, the Assemblée Nationale has approved the bill, and it still needs to be voted on by the Sénat on September 27.

In the law text, article 17 is relevant for Open Access:

Article 17

The chapter III of title III of the book V of the Research code is completed by an article L. 533-4 which reads as follows:

”Art. L. 533-4. -

I. " When a scientific article, result of a research activity funded for at least half by the State, local authorities or public institutions, by national agencies or by European Union grant, is published in a journal which comes out at least once a year, his author has the right to provide, even if he has granted an exclusive right to a publisher, a free availability in an open format, via digital channels, subject to the agreement of possible co-authors, to all the successive versions of the manuscript till the final version accepted for publication, as soon as it is freely made available by the publisher via digital channels, or, failing that, within a set period starting from the first publication date. That period is a maximum of 6 months for a publication in sciences, technical sciences and medicine and 12 in humanities and social sciences.

The version made available in accordance with the first subparagraph cannot be commercially exploited."

II. "When data result of a research activity funded for at least half by the State, local authorities or public institutions, by national agencies or by European Union grant are not protected by a specific right or a particular regulation and have been made public by the researcher, the institution or the research agency, their reuse is free."

III."The publisher of a scientific publication mentioned in the subparagraph I cannot limit the reuse of the research data made public in the publication.”