In response to the growing interest in the issue of Open Access to Research Publications, a meeting was held 29 June to bring together EUA Council Members who had expressed a strong interest in the subject to discuss future actions. The meeting aimed to review the involvement of National Rectors’ Conferences in current developments on the issue and to consider what complementary role and actions EUA could take at European level to ensure universities’ interests are represented in the ongoing debate. Additionally, the authors (Françoise Vandooren and Mathias Dewatripont, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) of the recent report “Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe”, undertaken for the European Commission Directorate General for Research, were invited to present their findings and recommendations to the meeting.
A strong consensus emerged at the meeting that European universities have a clear vested interest in becoming actively engaged in the debate as a stakeholder, not least because of the public funding implications of the markedly rising costs of scientific journals for university libraries, and the potential prospects and opportunities that ICT and digital publishing developments provide for open access. It was felt that EUA should respond to the increasing prominence of this issue – emphasised by key conferences to be organised by the European Commission and the German EU Presidency in 2007 - by undertaking awareness-raising initiatives and developing policy positions at European level. The overall recommendation of the meeting was that EUA should establish an “Ad Hoc Working Group on Open Access” (chaired by Sybolt Noorda, VSNU, The Netherlands) comprised of experts in the field nominated by the National Rectors’ Conferences. The Working Group membership and work programme will be presented at the next Council meeting in October 2006.
PS: The group doesn't seem to have a web site yet. But when it does, I'll blog it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/19/2006 01:27:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
