Press Release "Pan-European Model Law for the Use of Publicly Funded Scientific Publications " | LIBER Europe

16 March 2021, THE HAGUE – LIBER’s Executive Board has in June 2020 unanimously approved a pan-European model law concerning secondary publishing rights. The model law was initially proposed by two of LIBER’s working groups — Copyright & Legal Matters and Open Access — groups that strongly emphasise the need for a model law and who are actively working towards making this happen.

The proposed law marks a bold step for LIBER since it aims to extensively address secondary publishing rights by involving the European Union and national governments across Europe. Building on secondary publishing laws that already exist in a handful of European countries, the model law proposed by LIBER states a zero-embargo period for lawful self-archiving in publicly available repositories. If adopted, it will enable all European countries to have a secondary publishing law, either by the introduction of specific wording (see below) in law at an EU level, or by member states introducing such laws at a local level.

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