Researchers of the World: Unite to Support European Commission Open Access Policy

The European Commission, the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) and the European Research Councils have each recently recommended adopting the policy of providing Open Access to research results.

(Very similar recommendations are also being made by governmental research organisations in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Asia.)

There are powerful non-research interests lobbying vigorously against these policy recommendations, so a display of support by the research community is critically important at this time.

A petition in support of the European Commission recommendation is now being sponsored by a consortium of European organisations:

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK),
SURF (Netherlands),
SPARC Europe,
DFG (Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany),
DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek, Denmark).

The petition is to be presented to the European Commission February 15th in Brussels at its conference on "Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area: Access, Dissemination and Preservation in the Digital Age."

The petition's purpose is to demonstrate the broad-based support for the EC recommendations on the part of the European as well as the worldwide research community, particularly

Recommendation A1: "GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION"

Establish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives

Signatures may be added by individual researchers or by universities and research institutions.

Institutional signatures, from Europe and worldwide, are fast approaching 1000, while individual signatures are nearing 20,000.

Researchers, lab directors, institutute directors, university research VPs and DVCs, learned society and scholarly/scientific academy presidents are all strongly urged to register your support.

Please sign the OA petition here.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum