Peter Suber - Google+ - European Medical Research Councils call for green OA…

"From today's press release: 'The European Science Foundation's (ESF) membership organisation for all medical research councils in Europe, the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) has today released an ESF-EMRC Science Policy Briefing (SPB) entitled 'Open Access in Biomedical Research' highlighting the need to accelerate the adoption of open access to research articles in the biomedical sciences across Europe....The report provides three key recommendations for the adoption of open access policy: [1] There is a moral imperative for open access. Research papers should be made freely available to all to read, use and re-use, with appropriate acknowledgement, in order to maximise the value of biomedical research, build on the body of knowledge, accelerate the process of discovery and improve human health. [2] Individual agencies must work together to raise awareness of the moral imperative for open access....[3] All research stakeholders should work together in order to support the extension of Europe PubMed Central into a Europe-wide PubMed Central....The recently rebranded Europe PubMed Central represents a valuable means to achieving this goal, provided that the diversity of European partner mandates and policies can be integrated....' Here's a key excerpt from the report itself, showing that the EMRC is putting green OA ahead of gold OA, rejecting the approach of the RCUK and Finch Group:  '[Recommendation R2.1: Funding agencies] should encourage and work towards enabling gold open access publication and at the same time mandate green open access with an embargo period of no more than 6 months....'