• General considerations Open Access funding :

  To signal the importance of and launch a policy process on access to and dissemination of scientific/scholarly information and strategies for the preservation of such information across the Union, the Commission further issued a communication on scientific information to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee ( COM(2007) 56 ). The eContentplus programme ../.. further aims to improve the spread of European research results through experiments with open access. For these purposes, best practice networks for digital libraries as well as targeted projects for digital libraries and for scientific/scholarly content will be funded in 2007.

• 5.3. Targeted projects for scientific/scholarly content

  Objective: Improve the spread of European research results through conclusive experiments with open access to digital libraries of scientific/scholarly content. The latter refers to organised collections of published results of scientists' or scholars' research work in the EU Member States or other countries participating in the programme and includes both articles, papers, conference proceedings, monographs, textbooks and other similar publications and the related underlying datasets.
  Conditions: In addition to the common requirements for Targeted Projects, proposals should meet the following conditions:

  • Carry out conclusive experiments on new models and processes involving different types of relevant stakeholders, i.e. academic community, libraries, institutional repositories, scientific publishers and the funding bodies.
  • The needs of the users (i.e. researchers) should be taken into account, ensuring the right balance between the desirable dissemination of research results and the equally necessary protection of IPR.
  • The projects should build on existing experience at the national, European and international level.
  Expected results: Digital scientific/scholarly content held by different types of stakeholders is aggregated and made interoperable and available for open access across borders.

• Opening address ( Janez Potocnik European Commissioner for Science and Research )
• SCOAP3 CERN (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics)
• Dr. Aymar (CERN) presentation
• Dr. Franck Laloe
• Prof. Steven Harnard
• The Voice of the Community : Online Petition
• Closing Speech ( Viviane Reding Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media)
• Conference Proceeding

In January 2006 the European Commission published the Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe. The Study resulted from a detailed analysis of the current scholarly journal publication market, together with extensive consultation with all the major stakeholders within the scholarly communication process (researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, research policymakers, etc.). The Study noted that 'dissemination and access to research results is a pillar in the development of the European Research Area' and it made a number of balanced and reasonable recommendations to improve the visibility and usefulness of European research outputs. Now, a year after publication of the Study, we urge the EC to endorse the recommendations in full. In particular, we encourage you to adopt the first recommendation as a matter of urgency:
RECOMMENDATION A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION
We would recommend that, in accordance with the recent recommendations from the European Research Advisory Board and the statement of the European Research Council on Open Access, any potential 'embargo' on free access should be set at no more than six months following publication.

• Public consultation ( 06/10/2006 )
• Synthesis
• Public consultation: individual responses ( 28/09/2006 )