If you recall, Napoleon Miradon pointed out last month that the draft FP7 Grant Agreement requires grantees to submit electronic copies of their journal articles to the EC and permits the EC to redistribute them online.
Article II.12.2, Information and communication....The Commission shall be authorised to publish, in whatever form and on or by whatever medium, the following information:...the publishable reports submitted to it; ...
Article II.30.4, Dissemination....Furthermore, an electronic copy of the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication shall also be provided to the Commission at the same time for the purpose set out in Article II.12.2 if this does not infringe any rights of third parties....
Comment. Last month I said it would be a breakthrough if the EC adopted the draft guidelines, and now it has. "The EC is deliberating about when, whether, or how far to adopt the OA mandate (recommendation A1) from last year's EC-sponsored report. But the heart of that recommendation is already contained in the draft FP7 guidelines. This could change the question for the EC. Instead of deciding, from scratch, what policy to adopt or what to accept and what to reject from its own report, it would only have to decide what refinements to make in the existing policy or draft." I suggested a couple of refinements in my comment last month. But here I simply want to draw attention to what has been done. The EC has mandated submission of the author's peer-reviewed postprint (either of two versions) and declared that the EC has the authority to disseminate it in any way that it likes. That's the heart of an OA mandate.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/12/2007 06:12:00 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.
