A spark of interest: Former publisher Alma Swan leads the push to embed open-access publishing across the EU. She tells Tania Rabesandratana about her role with Sparc Europe.

"Now that the European Commission has pledged to ensure that research funded under Horizon 2020 will be published with open access, many EU governments are considering how to make sure that the general public gets free access to research that is paid for through taxes. The Commission announced in July that all publicly research funded through the Horizon 2020 programme, running from 2014, must be made open access. The Commission wants member states to follow the EU’s example, and hopes that 60 per cent of publicly funded research articles in Europe will be freely available by 2016. The UK’s research councils have announced similar obligations starting 1 April 2013. Alma Swan is director of European advocacy programmes at Sparc Europe, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition in Brussels, an interest group that promotes open access to science. She is keeping a close eye on those developments on behalf of her members. 'In general, things are going well at the moment. There are lots of new policies,' she says. 'But we want these policies to align. The fine details don’t matter, the thrust of these policies should match.' Sparc Europe has more than 90 members, mostly academic libraries and universities ... Participation is open to others, including learned societies and small businesses keen on developing alternative models for scholarly publishing... With open access set to become a permanent feature of Horizon 2020, Sparc’s members are keen to have their voices heard in the discussions. The crux of the debate remains choosing between the so-called 'green' and 'gold' routes...  In Horizon 2020, scientists will be able to choose either route. Research Councils UK favours the gold option, which protects the interests of publishing companies. Last year’s Finch report, commissioned by the UK government, endorsed this 'author pays' model and sparked strong opposition from researchers.  'You’ll see a lot more dissent coming from universities soon,' Swan predicts. She thinks that the issue of open access to research data has been more of a stumbling block than open access to scientific papers and results. 'The Commission has proposed an open data pilot, which has generated a lot of debate.'  Industry fears that it will be forced to reveal trade secrets, while patenters fear that they will have to disclose too much. 'These fears are mostly unfounded,” Swan says. “You can only publish data that directly underlies a paper, and if you’re about to patent an invention, you don’t publish a paper about it...'  'We want to support our members, mostly university libraries, in their advocacy efforts towards their governments and funders,' Swan says. 'Our approach is to spot places where we can make a difference, and forge partnerships to coordinate efforts.' She explains: 'What is crucial is whether other countries will follow [the UK]. Research Councils UK says it is leading the way, but the EU, the US and Australia are certainly not going that way.' At least the UK’s announcement got other governments to think about open-access policies more seriously, she adds..."