There have been some noteworthy contributions to the Open Access (OA) movement in Europe over the past week.
1) In the UK, the government announced that all UK-funded research will be OA within two years. An interesting commentary about this announcement has been provided by Mike Taylor, accessible via the link in his tweet:
“£2,000 is what subscription publishers would LIKE to charge for gold open access, but not what the market will bear.” guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2…
— Mike Taylor (@MikeTaylor) July 17, 2012
2) The Research Councils UK (RCUK) has strengthened its OA policy, summarized here. The announcement is available via the link in this tweet:
Via RCUK: RCUK announces new Open Access policy: Research Councils UK (RCUK) has today, 16th July 2012, unveiled… bit.ly/NYIFRW
— Research Councils UK (@research_uk) July 16, 2012
3) The the European Commission (EC) has backed calls for OA. See:
Publications from all EU-funded research to be available under #openaccess blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/o… ec.europa.eu/research/scien… #openscience
— Neelie Kroes (@NeelieKroesEU) July 17, 2012
and:
European Commission backs calls for open access to scientific research gu.com/p/394a8/tf
— The Guardian (@guardian) July 17, 2012
4) The European Research Council (ERC) has announced that it will participate in the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) OA repository service, and that the repository will be rebranded as “Europe PMC” by 1 November 2012. A link to information about this announcement is included in this tweet:
MT @robertkiley ERC renews its commitment to open access by joining Europe PubMed Central wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-off/Press-releases/2012/WTVM055890.htm #openaccess
— Jim Till (@jimtill) July 13, 2012
Comment: Will these important contributions to the OA movement give rise to analogous contributions in other nations? I hope so.
Be openly accessible or be obscure 