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Open access to research pub­lic­a­tions reach­ing ​‘tip­ping point’

22.08.2013
This is about twice the level estim­ated in pre­vi­ous stud­ies, explained by a refined meth­od­o­logy and a wider defin­i­tion of open access. The study also estim­ates that more than 40% of sci­entif­ic peer reviewed art­icles pub­lished world­wide between 2004 and 2011 are now avail­able online in open access form. The study looks at the EU and some neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, as well as Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States of Amer­ica. By mak­ing research res­ults more access­ible, open access can con­trib­ute to bet­ter and more effi­cient sci­ence, and to innov­a­tion in the pub­lic and private sec­tors. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Com­mis­sion­er for Research, Innov­a­tion and Sci­ence, said: ​“These find­ings under­line that open access is here to stay. Put­ting research res­ults in the pub­lic sphere makes sci­ence bet­ter and strengthens our know­ledge-based eco­nomy.” The study looked at the avail­ab­il­ity of schol­arly pub­lic­a­tions in 22 fields of know­ledge in the European Research Area, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States. In sev­er­al coun­tries and dis­cip­lines more than 50% of papers are now avail­able for free. Free avail­ab­il­ity of the major­ity of art­icles has been reached in the fields of gen­er­al sci­ence and tech­no­logy, bio­med­ic­al research, bio­logy and math­em­at­ics and stat­ist­ics. The fields where open access avail­ab­il­ity is most lim­ited are the social sci­ences and human­it­ies and applied sci­ences, engin­eer­ing and tech­no­logy. A recent European Com­mis­sion Com­mu­nic­a­tion iden­ti­fied open access as a core means to improve know­ledge cir­cu­la­tion and thus innov­a­tion in Europe. There­fore, open access will be man­dat­ory for all sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions pro­duced with fund­ing from Hori­zon 2020, the EU’s Research & Innov­a­tion fund­ing pro­gramme for 2014 – 2020. The Com­mu­nic­a­tion recom­men­ded that Mem­ber States take a sim­il­ar approach to the Com­mis­sion in their domest­ic pro­grammes. Com­mis­sion­er Geoghegan-Quinn stressed that the European Com­mis­sion is pro­mot­ing open access in Europe, includ­ing for the res­ults of its own research fund­ing: ​“The European tax­pay­er should not have to pay twice for pub­licly fun­ded research. That is why we have made open access to pub­lic­a­tions the default set­ting for Hori­zon 2020, the next EU research and innov­a­tion fund­ing pro­gramme.”

Back­ground

The study was under­taken by Sci­ence-Met­rix, a research eval­u­ation con­sultancy. The study included the 28 EU Mem­ber States, as well as Switzer­land, Licht­en­stein, Ice­land, Nor­way, Tur­key, The Former Yugoslav Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States of Amer­ica. Two oth­er reports by the same group were also released yes­ter­day, examin­ing open access policies and the issue of open access to data. Con­cern­ing open access policies, the report found that the major­ity of 48 major sci­ence fun­ders con­sidered both key forms of open access accept­able: open access pub­lic­a­tions in journ­als (referred to as ​“gold” and ​“hybrid” open access) and self-archiv­ing (referred to as ​“green” open access). More than 75% accep­ted embargo peri­ods — that is the gap between a pub­lic­a­tion and it becom­ing freely avail­able — of between six to 12 months. The third study found how­ever that there are cur­rently still few­er policies in place for open access to sci­entif­ic data than for open access to pub­lic­a­tions. Open access to research data is rap­idly evolving in an envir­on­ment where cit­izens, insti­tu­tions, gov­ern­ments, non-profits and private com­pan­ies loosely cooper­ate to devel­op infra­struc­ture, stand­ards, pro­to­types and busi­ness mod­els. Under Hori­zon 2020, the EU’s Research & Innov­a­tion fund­ing pro­gramme for 2014 – 2020, the Com­mis­sion will also start a pilot on open access to data col­lec­ted dur­ing pub­licly fun­ded research, tak­ing into account legit­im­ate con­cerns related to the grantee’s com­mer­cial interests, pri­vacy and secur­ity. The Com­mis­sion will make open access to sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions a gen­er­al prin­ciple of Hori­zon 2020. As of 2014, all art­icles pro­duced with fund­ing from Hori­zon 2020 will have to be accessible: 
  • art­icles will either imme­di­ately be made access­ible online by the pub­lish­er (“gold” and ​“hybrid” open access) — up-front pub­lic­a­tion costs can be eli­gible for reim­burse­ment by the European Com­mis­sion; or
  • research­ers will make their art­icles avail­able through an open access repos­it­ory no later than six months (12 months for art­icles in the fields of social sci­ences and human­it­ies) after pub­lic­a­tion (“green” open access).
Source: European Commission
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