Science Europe’s open access statement | Mostly physics

"The Science Europe foundation is an association of European research organisations whose objective is to strengthen collaboration between national research organisations throughout Europe. The most important Finnish research funder, Academy of Finland which currently only 'recommends' open access, is a member. I recently personally heard from the Academy director Heikki Mannila that the they will closely follow the Science Europe’s decisions in future Academy policy-making. Thus the recently announced 'Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications (April 2013)' is especially important for Finnish researchers. To quote from the document: 'The benefits of Open Access are clear; furthermore, the technology available allows for a decisive move towards making Open Access a reality. The ultimate goal is to move to a new and sustainable system of scholarly communication of Open Access that guarantees the highest quality of publications and maximises the impact of research results. Science Europe Member Organisations acknowledge that the transition towards such a system presents challenges and that a common understanding of these challenges, and a collective approach to tackle them, is the most efficient way forward to accomplish the transition.'  Open access advocate Ross Mounce warmly welcomed the statement on the The Open Knowledge Foundation blog, highlighting it’s rejection of hybrid open access – a counterpoint to some arguments that have been put forward. It will be very interesting to see if the Academy will interpret the position as a nudge towards implementing an actual mandate for Academy-funded research."