Brussels, 18/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 18 April, the EU's high level expert group on digital libraries presented its advisory report on copyright issues. The group, which includes stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google, presented the Commission with its views on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material. European Digital Libraries is one of the flagship i2010 initiatives.
The question of intellectual property is at the centre of the report, which explains why Viviane Reding, the EU's commissioner for information society and media stated: “Protection of intellectual property is important to stimulate creativity and innovation in the knowledge-based economy. Solving copyright issues in an online-environment is therefore crucial if we are to make the vision of a European Digital Library a reality".
The group is also seeking to open the debate on how best to promote, and to make use of, public-private cooperation, digital preservation of orphan and out of print works, and scientific information. The group has worked on the latter the over the past months to bring closer together the views of supporters of the open access movement with those of its detractors. As a major body funding scientific research in Europe, the European Commission intends to take direct action to experiment with the publication of scientific articles resulting from Community funded research in an open repository, after an embargo period still to be defined. Reding pointed out that, as part of the ongoing debates, “user interests” should be a priority, and that she would be looking “with great interest into the recommendations made by the high level group to see in which way the European Commission, the member states and the relevant stakeholders could best follow them up”. (gc)