Science Europe Releases Major OA Statememt

Science Europe, an association of fifty-one European national research organizations, released a major open access position statement on Monday. The statement titled “Principles for the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications” contained a set of agreed upon commons principles and actions to support the transition to open access.

The following is the set of principles:

With regard to Open Access to research publications, Science Europe Member Organisations share the view that:

• publication and dissemination of results are an integral part of the research process. The allocation of resources within the research system must take this into account; • Open Access to the published results of publicly-funded research will have huge value for the research community and will offer significant social and economic benefits to potential users in industry, charitable and public sectors, to individual professionals, and to the general public; • Open Access, as defined in the Berlin Declaration, is not only about the right of access, but also about the opportunity to re-use information with as few restrictions as possible, subject to proper attribution; • the common goal of Science Europe Members is to shift to a research publication system in which free access to research publications is guaranteed, and which avoids undue publication barriers. This involves a move towards Open Access, replacing the present subscription system with other publication models whilst redirecting and reorganising the current resources accordingly.

The statement then outlined some key actions for the Science Europe member organizations. The follow is an excerpt of the action list:

• recognise repositories and related facilities as key strategic research infrastructure which should comply with high quality standards; • require that as part of the publication services provided against the payment of Open Access publication fees, effective mechanisms are in place to ensure that the publication of research outputs is subject to rigorous quality assurance; • accept that it is essential that Open Access transactions need to be managed efficiently, with the co-operation of all parties involved; • stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent ‘double dipping’ and increase cost transparency;

Additionally, Peter Suber highlighted an important aspect about the statement. Suber wrote on his G+ page, ”Note in particular how these 51 organizations reject the RCUK/Finch approach in part by supporting green on the same terms as gold, in part by recognizing OA repositories as “key research infrastructure”, and in part by criticizing hybrid OA journals and condemning double-dipping.”

Science Europe encourages the European Commission, national governments, and researching funding and performing organizations to adopt this approach to open access.

Read the full statement here.