Petition on Open Access to European Research

Yesterday I signed the Petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results on behalf of the ACS:

This petition is directed to the European Commission. Its goal is to endorse the recommendations made in the Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe in full, in particular to adopt the first recommendation A1 as a matter of urgency.

"I urge decision-makers at all levels in Europe to endorse the recommendations made in the Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe in full, in particular to adopt the first recommendation A1 as a matter of urgency.

Name: Tom Worthington FACS HLM
Position: Chair of the Scholarly Publishing Committee
Country: Australia
Organisation/affiliation: Australian Computer Society

Recommendation A1. Guarantee Public Access To Publicly-funded Research Results Shortly After Publication:

Research funding agencies have a central role in determining researchers’ publishing practices. Following the lead of the NIH and other institutions, they should promote and support the archiving of publications in open repositories, after a (possibly domain-specific) time period to be discussed with publishers. This archiving could become a condition for funding. The following actions could be taken at the European level: (i) Establish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives, and (ii) Explore with Member States and with European research and academic associations whether and how such policies and open repositories could be implemented."

From: Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research, January 2006