John Wood is the chairman of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), launched in 2002 to develop a coherent approach to policymaking on research infrastructures in Europe and, in parallel, to conduct negotiations between the EU member states on concrete initiatives for such structures at European level.
In this interview, John Wood explains what these structures really are, how the 35 projects identified by ESFRI can be built up and gives some examples of research infrastructures' concrete benefits for people. He underlines the fact that all projects are of open access to any country and that all scientists - not only those of the financially contributing countries - can access the infrastructures....
Who can participate in these projects and, once built, use the infrastructures?
All projects will have open access to everybody, even if not all member states will financially contribute to all of them. Any non-EU country can also ask whether they can join and they are quite free to do so. China, Russia, India and the United States are already part of some projects. The European research infrastructures will, no matter who pays for them, be open access for the whole world. So, if the Chinese want to use one of them, they can. They just need to contribute to the costs of their researchers that are coming.
Open access is one of the key conditions defining a European research infrastructure. Already currently, any foreign researcher can access nearly any national or European research infrastructure and vice-versa. International exchanges are crucial in science and research....
Comment. When Wood says "open access" in this context he means unrestricted eligibility to use a physical facility, like a telescope or ice breaker. ESFRI's commitment to OA in this sense is all to the good. But to help OA in our sense, it would be very beneficial if ESFRI would stipulate that all researchers who make use of ESFRI's infrastructure or facilities must provide OA to any resulting peer-reviewed articles within six months of publication.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/23/2006 01:39:00 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.
