Support the European OA mandates: sign the petition!

The recent policy recommendation by the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) in favour of mandating open access remarkably brings to three the number of top-level European organisations moving towards this position on open access, including these earlier statements:

- European Research Council (ERC) Scientific Council Statement on Open Access, December 2006 (pdf 1pp)
- Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe (pdf 112pp), Directorate-General for Research, European Commission, January 2006

Researchers now need to show their support for these policies. As Stevan Harnad notes:

"There are non-research interests strongly lobbying against these recommendations, so a display of support by the research community is critically important."

A consortium of European organisations working in the scholarly communication arena is now sponsoring a petition to the European Commission to demonstrate support for these recommendations on the part of the European and worldwide research community.

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

"I would strongly urge you to register your support."

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

Rachel Bruce, JISC director, Information Environment, said: "Over the past year there has been significant progress in improving access to publicly funded research. This has included statements and policies from research funding bodies as well as investment in open repository networks. This progress will be strengthened by the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission’s study. With the backing of organisations across Europe, this petition demonstrates the level of support for rapid and open access to publicly funded research."

Update (19th January 2007) Discussion on the petition:

Richard Hardwick: "The (half-baked) petition is the wrong way round! Instead of calling on the European Commission to do something, it should say we the undersigned will do something - viz. make our manuscripts available to all, in open access archives, immediately after journal publication, and we invite everyone else in receipt of public funding for their research to do the same."

Stevan Harnad: "There is nothing in the least "half-baked" about the EC-petition: It is exactly what is needed at this time to show the support of the research community for the EU Commission's proposal to mandate OA self-archiving, it is growing at a breath-taking rate.

"But Richard also misses the logic and pragmatics of 20 adopted and the 6 proposed OA self-archiving mandates: The reason self-archiving is being mandated is that most researchers, even those who sign in support of OA self-archiving and OA self-archiving mandates, don't self-archive until/unless it is mandated."

"Hence the purpose of the EC (and other) OA self-archiving policy recommendations is to induce researchers to do the very thing that is in their own best interests (and those of research, and of their institutions and funders, and the public that funds them).

"And the purpose of the petition is to show the research community's support for those policy recommendations.

"Hence, not only not half-baked, but timely and apposite in the extreme!"