Open science in the EU – Will the astroturfers take over? - University World News

"European Commission (EC) President Jean-Claude Juncker’s transfer of heavyweight Robert-Jan Smits, the energetic outgoing director general of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, to the European Political Strategy Centre, an EC think-tank, as an ‘open access envoy’ has raised the prospect of added momentum being given to the commission’s plans for establishing a platform for open access by 2020.

With the call for proposals for establishing the open access platform due any day now, University World News has investigated with relevant stakeholders how Smits’ transfer might impact on the timing and implementation of the platform and what its significance could be.

In particular, after years in a deadlock with publishers, researchers are keen to know whether we will now see for-profit companies and ‘astroturfers’ enter the open science landscape and undermine science in pursuit of their commercial interests, while claiming to support the struggle of researchers – notably those in Germany, in their fight against Elsevier – who demand more say in the publishing of scholarly articles.

Smits’ task will be to help accelerate momentum towards making publicly-funded scientific papers and data freely available by 2020 – an ambitious target set by the Dutch government, and agreed upon by the other 27 member states, back in 2016. He believes that once EU-funded research is made open it will be stored on European servers – to prevent the possibility of European scientific data being stored abroad with access arbitrarily limited by non-EU governments. “A lot of the talk about open access is just lip service,” Smits said to ScienceGuide, and he wants to move past this...."