Joint declaration as European Commission VP Neelie Kroes and ALLEA agree on Open Science, Rome, 11-12 April 2012

“The joint declaration issues by ALLEA [European Federation of National Academies of Sciences and Humanities] is a call to scientific communities and their institutions to make decisive steps towards open science and innovation as a means to accelerate the discovery of solutions for the Grand Societal Challenges. At the ALLEA General Assembly - chaired by acting President Stefan Luby, and introduced by Lincei President Maffei and ministers Profumo (Education and Research) and Moavero Milanesi (European Affairs) -  Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and responsible for the Digital Agenda addressed a special policy session on ‘The Digital Agenda and Access to Scientific Information’. Under a heading ‘Open e-Infrastructures for Open Science’ she announced that following the consultations of the communities in 2011, the EC is finalising a proposal to open up access to the results and raw data of research funded under Horizon 2020. Three Academy presidents responded to the speech, addressing respectively issues such as ‘Science as a Public Enterprise’ (Royal Society of London), institutional alliances to support Open Access (KNAW) and Digital Humanities (Union of the German Academies). Mme Kroes said she counted on the engagement of the Academies in this field, and welcomed the joint declaration handed over by acting President Stefan Luby, entitled ‘Open Science for the 21st century’...The meeting coincided with the announcement by other major actors in global research funding that they would also pull their weight in supporting Open Access: the World Bank decided it will make findings of research it funds freely available, and the UK-based Wellcome Trust, a world leader in biomedical research funding, will soon launch a free online publication to compete with subscription-based journals.”