The recent Italian regulations about the open-access availability of publicly-funded research publications, and the documentation landscape in astrophysics

In October 2013 Italy enacted Law 112 2013, containing the first national regulations about the open access availability of publicly-funded research results (publications). The impact of these new regulations with the specific situation of that open access discipline which is astrophysics, has been considered. Under a strictly technical point of view, in the light of the new dispositions the open nature of a part of the astrophysical scholarly literature which has been made available online free to the reader during the last twenty years, might be questionable. Some possible ways to make astrophysicists’ scholarly dissemination entirely compliant with law requirements are considered.