New Commission measures to open up science in Europe

Use the link to access the full text of the blog post from Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda. “ICT can bring greater openness: regular readers will know how committed I am to delivering those benefits for everyone. Today, some exciting news about how we are also helping open up science, and a reminder of the benefits it can bring. It’s partly about making access to scientific information more affordable. Currently, in many cases getting access to published scientific research results needs an increasingly costly journal subscription. That may not be an option especially for smaller businesses. Even big institutions like university libraries are finding it’s getting unaffordable. And those difficulties to the public getting access apply even when the research is funded by the taxpayer – who is, after all, the biggest research funder in Europe... But improving access can also help science and innovation itself. Sharing research results helps the scientific community to examine, compare, learn, and spread knowledge — faster and better. For example, openness gives a boost to new tools like large-scale data analysis, meaning breakthroughs in drug treatments; or textmining, helpful in many different fields. And it’s not just scientists who gain: we know that, with simple, instant access to research, innovative small businesses can bring their products to market up to 2 years earlier... Being open with data – in this field as in others – brings huge benefits, for example boosting outcomes for research into complex problems like Alzheimer’s disease... Open access and scientific publishing are one aspect: but discussions on how to best organise and modernise peer review, or on more precise quality and impact metrics for scientific publications are part of the same picture... Today we detail our plans to make available under open access all publications stemming from EU-funded research. We also commit to progressively open access to research data... Perhaps even more importantly – because the Commission only accounts for a fraction of all public research funding in the EU – we are also formally recommending to EU Member States that they join us on this road to open access, for research funded at national level. In short: sharing and cooperation are essential to science – no wonder scientists have long sought out tools to help them do this better. Remember it was scientists at CERN who invented the World Wide Web. That was a great gift of science to society: now we can ensure that it helps the scientists back. This is – as one scientist put it to me – a return to the origins of modern science; where the philosophy was all about open access and achieving progress... For more details about today’s announcement see the home page or press release or watch the press conference launch.”