The European Commission is preparing new guidelines for the €3 billion a year European scientific publishing industry that could put pressure on major firms such as Elsevier or Oxford University Press to give free access to articles based on EU-funded work.
"We are looking at how to find a balance between academic interests and the companies that are investing their intellectual property," a spokeswoman for science commissioner Janez Potocnik said. "One suggestion is that research can be made public six months after it is published."
The suggestion, put forward by a January 2006 commission report outsourced to Belgian and French academics, comes in the context of rising subscription fees for academic journals...and falling publication costs due to the growth of digital publishing.
The EU should consider establishing a "policy mandating published articles arising from European Community-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives" the report states, with Brussels planning to dish out €33.2 billion in research grants between 2007 and 2013....
The commission's guidelines will take the form of a "communication" to be issued on 15 February - a document that has no legal force but creates political pressure and could lead to future legislation....
"Mandates are the way to encourage this," Rachel Bruce, a director at the UK-based Joint Information Systems Committee said...."The principle is that everybody should have access to research that the public has paid for. It's not about taking away quality markers or editorial value. It's about moving knowledge forward," Ms Bruce said, adding that academics are willing to sign over copyright to prestigious magazines because that is the only way to build a scientific career under the status quo....
STM director Michael Mabe said [in reply,] "The European Commission should recognise what they are dealing with here, which is a European success story. This sector employs 42,000 people, generates €3 billion for the trade balance and is a world leader."
Mr Mabe cited opinion polls by University College London which say "most scientists don't want to go down another route, they are very focussed on getting their work published" because of the peer-review process that gives work authority, adding that up to 50 percent of article downloads take place 12 months after publication.
He said STM contributes to UN programmes to help doctors in Africa access research and that the EU could do more in this field instead. "There are ways of addressing this issue that don't throw the baby out with the bath water...If there is a real problem, there's a clear role for the EU to play here."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/25/2007 04:46:00 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.
