Brussels, 16/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - Access to research results plays a vital role in driving innovation and maintaining the quality of research, the Commission stresses in a communication dated Thursday 15 February. Developments in digital technology challenge existing business models and practices for making research results available, and, with open access research, funding bodies are taking different approaches. The communication aims to determine how the new digital technologies may be best used to improve access to scientific publications and data, to promote innovation in our increasingly knowledge-based economy. The Commission's ideas were discussed at a conference organised in Brussels on 15 - 16 February. The conference, attended by Commissioners Viviane Reding (information society) and Janez Potocnik (research), follows on from an expert study commissioned in 2006.
The Commission's communication gives an objective overview of the current state of play in Europe regarding scientific publishing and the preservation of research results, examining organisation, legal, technical and financial issues. Digital technologies are reshaping how research information is viewed, analysed and eventually published. For example, about 90% of all science journals are now available online, often by subscription. But digital technologies are also leading to more open access publishing. This provides free and wide access to publications online. Better access to research data also opens the way to new types of uses and services, often through re-using of past results as the raw material for new experimentation. Online access to current scientific information does not guarantee its future availability. Digital information has a limited lifetime and needs to be maintained over time. Better tools and organisational steps are necessary to ensure digital preservation and thus prevent the loss of important scientific information.
The Commission has already identified the following concrete measures: 1) To improve current and future access to scientific information, the EU will support experiments with open access in its recently-launched research programme (for example by refunding the project costs of open access publishing). 2) The Commission has also earmarked some €50 million for 2007-2008 to support and help coordinate infrastructures for storing scientific data across Europe, and €25 million for research on digital preservation, supporting in particular centres of competence in digital preservation. The eContentplus programme will devote €10 million to improving interoperability of, and multilingual access to, collections of scientific material. (oj)