IP Policy Committee blog » Blog Archive » Ten reasons for an open access scientific publishing policy in EU´s Horizon 2020

[Use the link to access the blog post from the IP Policy Committee of the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).  “The TACD IP Policy Committee is part of the The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a forum of US and EU consumer organisations which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to the US government and European Union to promote the consumer interest in EU and US policy making.] “The EU should promote the sharing and dissemination of scientific knowledge [1] European taxpayers pay for the research and, therefore the public should have access to the results. [2] Open access will quickly provide professionals and policy makers with crucial health-related and environmental information, without costly pay-walls or strict commercial confidentiality rules. [3] Open access would mean more economic efficiency of EU funded research by speeding research progress and limiting wasteful repetition through greater transparency. [4] Many research funding agencies and universities support open access as they want the research they support to have the greatest possible impact. [5] Scholars and academics do not want to have the circulation of their work restricted by copyright licensing that often awards re-publishing and re-use rights to publishers. [6 ] The high cost of scientific journals stifles the broad sharing and dissemination of scientific knowledge. [7] On-line publishing has drastically reduced costs while profits by publishers remain very high, often above 35%. [8] University and research library budgets are under great financial strain due to the high price of scientific journals. [9] Developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America would greatly benefit from open access publishing because most of the countries of the South cannot afford the purchase of scientific journals. [10] The dominant position of three publishing groups that control nearly half of global scientific publications gives excessive academic and economic power to just a few players."