The European Commission (EC) has launched a pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to EU-funded research results, primarily research articles published in peer reviewed journals, after an embargo period of 6-12 months. The pilot will cover around 20 percent of the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7) budget in areas such as health, energy, environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies.
With this initiative, the EC seeks to ensure that the results of the research it funds under the FP7 with more than €
50 billion from 2007-2013 are disseminated as widely and effectively as possible. EC's open access (OA) pilot, to run until the end of FP7, aims to ensure that the results from EU-funded research are progressively made available to all.
Grant recipients will be required to deposit peer reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their FP7 projects in an online repository. They will have to make their best effort to ensure OA to these articles within either six or 12 months after publication, depending on the research area. This embargo period will allow scientific publishers to get a return on their investment.
OA to research articles, previously accessible through journal subscriptions, is seen to help to increase the impact of the EU's investment in research and development and avoid wasting time and resources on duplicative research. With access to a wider selection of literature, researchers can build upon this knowledge to further their own work. Small and medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs can also benefit from improved access to the latest research developments to speed up commercialisation and innovation.
The OA pilot was foreseen in the EC's February 2007 communication on 'Scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation'. In reaction to this communication, the November 2007 Council of EU research ministers invited EC to experiment with OA in FP7.
<
Since 2006, the EC has organised extensive consultations with stakeholders on OA policies, including a high level stakeholder conference, attracting some 500 participants, in February 2007. Many national funding bodies, such as the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the National Institutes of Health in the US, already have OA rules. The European Research Council's Scientific Council adopted its Guidelines for Open Access in December 2007.
