Horizon 2020: Defending Open Access and Open Data - Open Enterprise

At the end of last year, I wrote about the important Horizon 2020 initiative. Here's how it describes itself: Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness. Running from 2014 to 2020 with an €80 billion budget, the EU’s new programme for research and innovation is part of the drive to create new growth and jobs in Europe. Serious money, as you can see. But equally important are the ground rules it adopts, since they will have a major impact on how research is conducted across the whole of the European Union. In particular, a crucial issue is how the results of research funded by Horizon 2020 will be made available. Since the public is paying, it's only fair that the public should have free access, and that means an open access mandate is a key part of the initiative. The details of Horizon 2020's open access requirements were set out in July of this year ... As you can see, the EU's open access policy is important not just because it applies to the €80 billion Horizon 2020 project, but also because of the knock-on effects it will have on other publicly-funded research. That means it is vital that we get this right.  Sadly, though, the lobbyists have been at work again trying to undermine the basically sound proposals of the European Commission. You can read the current text, with recent additions that water down its impact, on the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) site. Fortunately, one of the leading figures in the open access world, Peter Suber, has distilled the problems there into a short post, which I urge you to read, along with the interesting comments that have been added to it.  Apparently the final vote in the Industry committee takes place next week, on the 28 November. If you feel inclined to write to them, there's a full list of ITRE members on La Quadrature du Net; the UK MEPs are as follows ..."