Objective 2.4: Open access to scientific information
Funding instrument: Pilot B It is intended to support several actions.
Focus and outcomes:
Within the framework of the actions on scientific information initiated by the Communication on scientific information in the digital age the objective is to improve the spread of European research results. This objective is sought not only in the context of the Digital Libraries Initiative, but also within the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7).
The term "scientific/scholarly content" refers to the results of scientists' or scholars' research work in the EU Member States or other countries participating in the programme, which in the traditional publishing paradigm have been published as articles in learned journals, papers, conference proceedings, monographs or books.
In this context pilot B actions will be funded to carry out conclusive experiments with open access to digital libraries of scientific/ scholarly content, including experiments exploring new paradigms for peer reviewing, rendering, querying and linking scientific/scholarly content and (optionally) the related underlying datasets.
Conditions and characteristics:
The quality and quantity of the digital content (and related metadata) to be effectively contributed to the pilot by each content provider, as well as the criteria for its selection, must be clearly identified. The consortium and its members must ensure the necessary availability of the content to be contributed to the pilot. In particular, the input content should not depend on proprietary third- party rights or any other constraints, which would limit its use for the execution of the pilot.
The consortium and its members must agree on the necessary licensing or clearing arrangements for any Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) arising from the pilot to ensure wider use and dissemination of the project output.
The actual content should be accessible and retrievable at item level. Projects dealing only with catalogues of content will not be funded. The results of the pilot must be accessible by the target users beyond the end of the pilot.
The consortium must include content providers. It should also include or involve explicitly in the project different types of relevant stakeholders, i.e. academic community, libraries, institutional repositories, scientific publishers and the funding bodies.
The users, i.e. researchers, and their needs, also beyond the consortium participants, must be clearly identified. Proposers must present an analysis of demand based as much as possible on quantified evidence. The users and their needs should also be at the centre of the proposed approach.
The issues addressed and the way to tackle them should have a European dimension, i.e. they should impact on a large number of users in the largest possible number of EU countries.
Proposers should demonstrate that the underlying content constitutes the critical mass necessary to make a significant impact in terms of increasing access and use in the concerned area or that the experiments exploring new paradigms can have a considerable impact on the future development of the scientific information area.
Specific and realistic quantified indicators should be provided to measure the envisaged improvements in availability, access and use at different stages in the pilot lifetime.
A clear exploitation plan should be presented to ensure the sustainability of the proposed solutions, i.e. their capability of developing and surviving without Community funding after the end of the project. Sustainability comprises both economic and organisational aspects.
A clear dissemination plan should be established to ensure optimal use of the pilot results, also beyond the participants in the pilot.
Expected impact:
Open access to more scientific/scholarly content and/ or the development of new ways to review, render, query and link scientific/scholarly content.
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.
