A Public Infrastructure for Open Access – Open Future

"Today, approximately half of all research articles are Open Access and freely available to read, yet new barriers have been created for authors to publish. These barriers, including Article Processing Charges (APCs) and the current academic incentive structure, are not impacting authors evenly. There is growing recognition that open-access publishing models that rely on APCs paid by authors are neither equitable nor sustainable. Researchers, including those early in their careers, as well as those in the Majority World, often lack the financial resources necessary to pay APCs. What is more, instead of negatively impacting the profit margins of commercial academic publishers — which currently yield up to 40% profit — open-access publishing models have provided a new revenue stream for publishers through high-priced APCs.

In addition to the content itself, the infrastructure on which research resides must be open, too. Over the past ten years, much of the critical infrastructure supporting open-access content, including F1000, SSRN, and bepress, has been acquired by commercial publishers. Open-access research is at risk of enclosure when hosted on a closed, proprietary, or commercial infrastructure....

The EU should swiftly adopt measures to support non-profit, community-driven open-access publishing by moving away from APCs, establishing a policy of no embargoes for research articles, reforming research assessment, and building on its funding program by developing a policy in support of global cooperation. In addition, the Commission should move to quickly ensure that the entire ORE platform is hosted on the Public Digital Infrastructure.

However, the most sweeping tool at the EU’s disposal is the introduction of harmonized secondary publishing rights for publicly funded research. This would give authors the right to make their works open access through repositories without regard to the terms of the publishers’ contracts. While seven Member States have such rights in their national legislations, six carry embargo periods ranging from 6-24 months. To allow for the open sharing of research to tackle the mounting global challenges facing society, the EU should introduce harmonized secondary publishing rights for the immediate sharing of publicly funded research — either as a stand-alone measure or — as we propose elsewhere — as part of a Digital Knowledge Act."