Brussels, 02/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - EU researchers, businesses and citizens can have free and open access to EU-funded research papers thanks to OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe), which the European Commission launched on Thursday at Ghent University Belgium.
OpenAIRE will provide free online access to knowledge produced by scientists receiving grants from the Seventh Framework programme (FP7) especially in the fields of health, energy, environment, parts of information & communication technology and research infrastructures, social sciences, humanities and science in society. “This is an important step towards full and open access to scientific papers that could, for example, allow patients with rare illnesses to have access to the latest medical research results, or provide scientists with real-time updates about developments in their field”, explains the Commission in a press release.
Developing research infrastructure and e-infrastructure for scientific research results, with a view to boosting Europe's competitiveness, is a priority of both the Digital Agenda for Europe and the Innovation Union initiative.
Some 2.5 million research articles are published in 25,000 peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings worldwide every year. Currently, just 15% to 20% of these articles are available in Open Access repositories or Open Access journals, the rest only accessible through pay-per-read schemes or by paying for a subscription to the publication. The EU-funded OpenAIRE infrastructure could eventually open up access to all scientific papers and data produced by researchers funded by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7). Since FP7 started in 2007, some 10,000 projects have been funded. (http://www.openaire.eu ) (L.C./transl.fl)