Call to action – Please sign European Petition on Open Access Today!

Last year, the European Commission published a “Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe”. The report incorporates a number of strong recommendations in support of greater access to published research. Specifically, the report recommends that European research funders require “published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives”.

There has been a substantial response to the report, but policies have still not been set at European level. The European Research Advisory Board (EURAB), for example, has recently encouraged the EC to adopt an open access mandate. If the EC stands firm and adopts the recommendations, this will be a massive boost to open access throughout Europe. And there is now an opportunity for researchers worldwide to show their support for such action.

A group of European organisations – JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), SURF (Netherlands), SPARC Europe, DFG (Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF (Denmark’s Electronic Research Library) – have posted a petition to encourage the EC to formally endorse the open access recommendations. The number of signatories is rising rapidly, and if a large collection can be amassed this will demonstrate the strength of support that exists for open access.

Now is the time to act! Please sign the petition today, and encourage your colleagues to do so as well.