EU advised to do more to support open access - Research Professional News

"The EU and its member states should do more to support open access scholarly publishing, according to a new independent study of OA policies across Europe, published by the European Commission.

Having analysed the policies of 35 European countries, including the 27 EU member states, Daniel Spichtinger, an independent EU research policy specialist and former member of the Commission’s open science unit, concluded that progress towards full OA “has been real but uneven” and “slower than expected”.

“Over more than a decade, EU soft-law instruments, national strategies, funder mandates and, in some cases, national legislation…have undeniably advanced OA,” his report says. “However, they have not produced a coherent, consistent or convergent framework.”

Instead, European countries “continue to differ substantially” on issues such as funding models, copyright and allowed embargo periods before publications must be made openly available.

This matters because the “fragmentation creates complexity for researchers, institutions and funders, especially in cross-border collaboration”, the report says."