EIFL welcomes the EC Communication and Recommendation

EIFL warmly welcomes the European Commission Conclusion and Recommendation to Member States on the European Research Area (ERA), outlining measures to improve access to scientific knowledge produced in Europe to make it easier for researchers and businesses to build on the findings of publicly-funded research, providing a policy framework for improving access to and preservation of scientific information in EU Member States, and setting out open access policy objectives for the research funded by the Commission through Horizon 2020.

As one of the partners in the EU-funded OpenAIRE project (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe), which provides e-infrastructure and a network of experts to support the researchers towards meeting open access policy requirements for  research funded under FP7 programme (known as the FP7 Open Access Pilot), EIFL promotes open access policies and the interoperability of data infrastructures and strongly supports the Commission's statement that policies on open access to scientific research results should apply to all research that receives public funds.

EIFL especially welcomes the Commission's step to make open access to scientific publications a general principle of Horizon 2020 (the EU's Research & Innovation funding programme for 2014-2020) and the Commission's recommendation that Member States take a similar approach to the results of research funded under their own domestic programmes. As of 2014, all articles produced with funding from Horizon 2020 will have to be openly accessible either immediately by the publisher (up-front publication costs can be eligible for reimbursement by the European Commission) and/or researchers will make their articles available through an open access repository no later than six months (12 months for articles in the fields of social sciences and humanities) after publication. As the Communication states, the goal is for 60% of European publicly-funded research articles to be available under open access by 2016.

Promoting open access to research data (experimental results, observations and computer-generated information etc.) and setting a pilot framework in Horizon 2020, taking into account legitimate concerns in relation to privacy, commercial interests and questions related to large data volumes, is another Commission's step that EIFL strongly supports.

EIFL joins the Commission in its call to research stakeholder organisations including research funders to

• define institutional policies for the dissemination of and open access to scientific publications; and establish implementation plans at the level of those funding institutions;

• encourage researchers to retain their copyright while granting licences to publishers;

• support and reward researchers who participate in a culture of sharing the results of their research, in particular by ensuring open access to their publications and by developing, encouraging and using new, alternative models of career assessment, metrics and indicators.

We will be working with stakeholders in Member States to ensure that this recommendation is put into practice as national policies are developed. And we hope that more and more research articles and data that result from publicly funded research become publicly accessible, usable and re-usable through digital e-infrastructures.

EIFL
Rome, 18 July 2012
Contact: Rima Kupryte, Director, rima.kupryte@eifl.net

EIFL is an international not-for-profit organisation based in Europe with a global network of partners. Working in collaboration with libraries and library consortia  in more than 60 developing and transition countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, EIFL enables access to knowledge for education, learning, research and sustainable community development. For further information about EIFL Open Access Programme: http://www.eifl.net/openaccess

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