Scientific journal publishers have long defended their convictions that subscriptions are necessary to finance their operations. However, efforts to extend free access to scientific and academic research papers received a big boost recently. Science Business brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “Moedas: journal papers based on EU-funded science should be free to access.”
Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas said, “I believe every scientific article from Europe should be open access,” as he gave his strongest support yet to an EU-wide push to steer publishers into opening up academic journals.
“There is a strong economic, scientific and moral case for embracing open science,” said Moedas. “Either we open up to a new publishing culture and lead the market, or we keep things as they are and let the opportunity pass.”
This happened at an event organized by the Dutch government, which is supportive of leveling the inequities of the subscription-based academic publishing system where public R&D funding bodies pay both for the research and for access to the results of that research.
The Dutch Education minister and open access advocate Sander Dekker both supported Moedas in eliminating the “monopoly” in research.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
