EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020/

by emartinelli • 10 years ago

1205 132 10 years ago

futurism.com

akerro• 10 years ago

What if a paper was written by an international team with members from US/Australia?

tingol• 10 years ago

If they agree to EU funding they are subject to the rules imposed by it. At least that's what I hope will happen.

yaantc• 10 years ago

From the source on futurism.com: "This would legally only impact research supported by public and public-private funds".

So if the team is funded partially by some European organization(s) it would apply to them, otherwise not.

dogma11382• 10 years ago

Same things that happens when you have to apply other EU regulations like the "Right to be Forgotten".

What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material.

Also it's important to note that only research which has been funded with public funds is applicable for this and depending on under which "Open Access" model they'll end up operating under there might be some additional restrictions.

IanCal4• 10 years ago

What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material.

I'd be absolutely amazed if this happens.

The current common setups for funding bodies which already require open access are:

1. Can't go behind a paywall, so money is included in the grant for publishing costs.

2. Can go behind a paywall, but a copy must be made available somewhere else (not as common).

I have no idea why they'd go about building a geoblocked repository, that sounds expensive and I cannot see what problem it actually solves.

exceptione• 10 years ago

Although I did not contribute to anything of this, it makes me a proud European. :)

I wonder if the US will follow suits when/if this happens. Any thoughts?

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Edit: maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead [http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientifi...].

sctb• 10 years ago

Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-that-all-scient..., which points to this.

iso-8859-1• 10 years ago

maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577

d_theorist• 10 years ago

Here is what was actually agreed: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-IN... (PDF direct link)

The intention sounds good, but it seems like there is still a lot of detail to be worked out.

dagurp• 10 years ago

*European Union

billpg• 10 years ago

Just wait till you see how many people use "America" when they mean "The United States of America".

Practicality3• 10 years ago

Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent. That would be North America or South America. (I suppose you could call the super continent just "America" but most call it "The Americas" instead.)

Clearly the term "America" either disambiguates to a continent or a country, and most assume the country.

"Europe," on the other hand, really is a continent, so the term has a completely different meaning than the EU, although it would be reasonable for the two to be synonymous eventually, they clearly are not currently.

Anyway, it seems reasonable to use the term America as shorthand, instead of U.S.A., as it's pretty obvious what you mean.

hx87• 10 years ago

And the incessant complaints from Spanish speakers about how this is inaccurate and unfair.

d3ckard• 10 years ago

Great change! Makes me proud of european institutions.

bobthechef2• 10 years ago

Really? That's all it takes? With all of the bungling in recent years, they have a long way to go before "pride" and "European institutions" can appear in the same sentence. You should also think through the full consequences of this move. The idea of free papers is nice, but it's not a fairy tale victory of good over evil. Also, political motives are worth considering. Science in the EU, given what it is, may wish to become more competitive in the face of American science and attract collaboration in more or less the same way open source and free software has.

rerx• 10 years ago

I wonder if this will mean that European scientist will only be allowed to publish in open access journals or if it will be sufficient if copies of the papers are made freely available. The APS, who publishes the Physical Review journals which are some of the most important in physics, for instance already allows authors and their employers to post their papers online free of charge [http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post]. In my field everybody already puts every paper onto the arxiv anyway, so open access is almost a lived practice.

Const-me• 10 years ago

IANAL, but to me, the wording “must be freely accessible to everyone” in the press release means free copies should be OK. As long as those are exact and complete copies.

thr0waway123911• 10 years ago

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1]

It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community embraces this with gusto. The parallel with OSS is interesting - somewhat in the same spirit as the programming community embraced open source, I think the benefit of open access is that the researcher evaluates the tradeoff between 'capturing value' vs 'making a difference', without worrying about the external factor of 'what does this external entity, which provided very little in terms of constructive input when the work was being done, allow me to do (with regards to publishing openly)?'.

But then again, I could be completely wrong, especially in domains like the physical sciences where I don't know how the incentives align. I hope it works out well, and that soon this is the just the norm in all countries.

[1] http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backla...

a3_nm4• 10 years ago

someone has to bear the cost of the review process

Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).

thr0waway123911• 10 years ago

The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all.

To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications.

I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.

sevensor• 10 years ago

Seriously, everyone from the reviewer to the AE to the editor is doing this for free in almost every case. Or not for free exactly, but not for money either. For academics, reputation is the coin of the realm. Academic publishers have tried (quite successfully, until the last couple of years) to corner the market on prestige. This means they can get academics to do all kind of work, without spending any actual dollars.

08-15• 10 years ago

because reviewing is unpaid labor

Indeed, and that's a strange situation.

I submit that it is immoral to review for a for-profit journal without receiving appropriate compensation[1]. Doing so and then complaining about the extortionist behavior of the established publishers is also hypocritical and/or stupid.

Attempts to boycott a publisher or two have happened before, but they are useless. Scientists are hurting themselves by not publishing in the high ranking journals or by not reading them. Boycotting their exploitative review process, however, would hit them where it hurts and cost very little.

[1] Uncompensated review services for any non-traditional journal are equally immoral, but that's another topic.

adzicg• 10 years ago

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry

I assume that 50 years ago the cost of getting information out to people was quite significant. printing, distribution, logistics... a single researcher wouldn't be able to deal with lots and lots of publishing institutions efficiently, and a single institution (except for the largest ones) wouldn't be able to publish efficiently. at my uni school, they had 2 geometry professors, and they perhaps published something every few years. no need for the school to publish its own geometry journal. middle-men such as Elsevier emerged to provide a useful service, achieving efficiencies of scale on both ends, providing a publishing channel for smaller schools and a discovery service for researchers. kind of the same as why travel agents existed. it was too difficult for a single person to deal with all the hotels and airlines in the world, and they didn't even know where to go and ask about that stuff.

Today, the cost of getting the information out to people being insignificant, they are an obstacle instead of being an enabler, adding very little value to what people can do directly. On the other hand, as long as they can keep the effective monopoly going, they can milk the market. Travel agents didn't have a chokehold on a market, and got easily disrupted by web sites. Elsevier requires regulators to step in.

ig1• 10 years ago

It's not just the cost of reviews though. Most new journals take decades to become break-even, they're typically subsidized by cashcow journals (big names with good reputations which bring in solid revenue).

Launching a new journal is a non-trivial process, you have to convince people to publish in it, you have to convince peer reviewers that it's worth their effort, etc. You have to have a marketing and sales teams that gets it into the hands and minds of researchers/libraries/etc. Then follows several decades of brand building before you make any real money. Many journals don't make it and die and publishers have to swallow the losses.

In practice OA has other solutions (author pays) to fund this, but it's far from a free lunch.

pjc502• 10 years ago

Note that the current publishing arrangements for "open access" can often involve substantial fees paid by the authors to the publishers. Arxiv is definitely an exception.

a3_nm4• 10 years ago

Precisely. European articles may be "free to read", but most of them will probably not be free to publish.

For-profit publishers will probably appreciate this: it means that, while European institutions will probably still pay subscription fees (to read foreign research), they will now also have to pay extortionate open-access fees when publishing. In addition to paying researchers to produce and peer-review the research...

p4bl05• 10 years ago

I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. What a3_nm says is very important. There are multiple forms of open access, and the EU is being lobbied by publishers to push for their idea of open access, sometimes called "gold open access", in which the authors pay to publish.

This is a really bad model as it makes money part of an equation which should only be governed by scientific concerns: should this paper be published or not?

Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but they won't be able to publish their findings…

And even thought it kind of solve the problem of mass access to scientific publications, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of public money is going in the pockets of private academic publishers for no good reasons. With this model, research is still paid for at least 3 times (for doing it, reviewing it, and now publishing it instead of accessing it) by universities and research institutions, while publishers are making an awful lot money for hosting PDFs. This money which could be used to do more research, as only a tiny part of it would be necessary to support the necessary arXiv-like infrastructure.

peter3032• 10 years ago

Preprint services like arXiv are not taken seriously by academic hiring and promotion commitees. The work has not been peer reviewed. Preprints do count for scientific priority however.

The current issue of Science says about five disciplines are trying to imitate the physics arXiv. There is much resistance in some sectors.

pacificleo11• 10 years ago

arron swartz was right

anonymousDan2• 10 years ago

Why on earth do people think this is to the detriment of publishers? This will effectively just lock in their profits by forcing all eu grants to include the cost of payments to publishers to make research papers open access. It just means the taxpayer is now paying for open access instead of individuals having to pay up themselves. Note I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and it is possibly worth publicly subsidising this as an intermediate step, but it is far from being one in the eye for publishers as other comments here seem to think.

IanCal4• 10 years ago

It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract from a paper, and makes things far more transparent.

It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.

anonymousDan2• 10 years ago

Good point. However, at some point publishers are going to up their charges, e.g. because of inflation. How will the cost increases be negotiated? Between the funding bodies and publishers behind closed doors? Or will they be imposed unilaterally by publishers, forcing academics to limit their submissions to pay-for open-access journals? This will bring into conflict the need for academics to publish in top venues to ensure career progression and the budget limitations posed by finding bodies. I suppose this could give momentum to the move towards completely free open access journals, but I'm sceptical given the risks for academics in not publishing at top venues. And although they get a hard time, I do believe there are some costs involved in running a journal despite all the free work they currently get from scientists, so I'm not sure completely free journals are realistic either anyway.

I'm not sure if there are any more details available yet, but I would worry about this turning into even more of a gravy train for publishers. I can't see for example the Dutch government being in any hurry to introduce any legislation that will threaten Elsevier's viability.

Nonetheless it is still a positive step that scientific findings look like becoming more readily accessible for the general public.

p4bl05• 10 years ago

It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract from a paper.

Why should we accept publishers to decide on what this limit should be? Currently it can be as high as $5000. For hosting a PDF. This is a total waste of (mostly public) money.

It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.

No because as long as we permit to those publishers to exists and exercise their copyrights on prestigious journal title, their is a big inertia that incentivize researchers to publish with the publishers that hold the prestigious journal.

That's why we also need to get rid of bibliometrics for evaluating researchers for their career. Bibliometrics is the game of the publishers, and coincidentally, the biggest bibliometrics tools are made and sold by… publishers.

thr0waway123911• 10 years ago

One way or the other, to the extent that there will be a cost associated, it is going to be borne by taxpayers in open access (in fact, the taxpayers in the richest countries will probably subsidize the research of the poorer ones during collaboration).

But your point is very true - at some point we need the top publishers to be thrown out of business and for new ones to emerge AND the new publishers need to maintain costs which reflect true costs rather than the current 'what can we get away with?' prices they charge. Strangely, competition will be really good for this situation but it will not be so great for the researchers. (It would be like determining the quality of a webpage when no website has a PageRank higher than 3). Isn't that why there is so much hair pulling over this issue amongst researchers?

Isn't this ruling going to at least help a little in the sense that the researches now have a legal reason to push back on publishers who charge the exorbitant rates, plus as the sibling comment says, introduces a bit more transparency into the process?

I am interested in getting your thoughts on how to kickstart more competition amongst publishers.

legulere• 10 years ago

It also means that researchers have to think about the cost of publishing which they before haven't. This should create a downward pressure on prize/upward pressure on quality by the publishers.

red_admiral2• 10 years ago

Publisher-hosted open access is a scam.

Here in the UK we already have an open-access requirement for RCUK and EPSRC grants, but it can be met by uploading a preprint to an institution- or subject-specific repository (such as arXiv) and including a link to it in your report back to the grant sponsor.

Last time I published in a journal, I got a "special offer" of $1200 instead of $2000 to make it open access. I politely rejected the offer - it's already online for $0, just hosted by the university itself.

foota• 10 years ago

This makes me feel stupid, but people get paid when they publish in journals?

baby2• 10 years ago

This doesn't make any sense, why would they make you pay less to make it open access? You mean it was 1200$ more?

pessimizer• 10 years ago

Honestly, if academics still choose to pay the established journals thousands to host single pdfs, they're paying for the brand. If schools still choose to subscribe to those journals when all of the papers in them are available for free, they're paying for the brand. The publishers legitimately own the brand.

The goal is for all public scientific research to be available to the public for free, not to smash middle-men. If your goal is to smash middle-men, you'll be smashing all day and all night for the rest of your life, and middle-men are generally better at smashing than you are.

Also, if you look at your job, you may be a middle-man yourself. Most upper middle-class people are.

jimmytidey• 10 years ago

This is from May, but the commitment is welcome none the less. As other comments mention there are plenty of ways for academic papers to be free to read and for us to still have a broken system.

In the UK, 'green route' or self-archiving means that, after a moratorium, you can put your paper on your institution's website. The moratorium could be three years, so it's still highly restrictive and locks in commercial publishers' profits.

My view is that a 'knowledge commons' system could easily work. Wikipedia apparently spends $50 million in total. I believe a similar amount of funding would easily support an academic publishing ecosystem in which publishing and reading are free.

I present some more detail here: https://medium.com/@jimmytidey/designing-knowledge-commons-t...

JohnStrange5• 10 years ago

I'm not sure about that. Where I currently live we now have a regulation that we need to put every article open access on some server, while at the same time providing us with no guarantee or assistance that journals won't sue us. Meanwhile, journals keep requesting copyright transfer agreements.

Basically, our government currently forces us to commit copyright infringement or to end our careers and funding by not publishing in established journals.

In the good old spirit of our country, nobody does anything and the open access servers remain empty until the higher authorities get a basic grasp of the publishing reality. People are used to incompetent bosses around here.

aurizon• 10 years ago

By a law that declares the reproduction of Scientific Articles a permitted use.

ramblenode• 10 years ago

On the contrary, I think publishers have a lot to be worried about because this is a first step toward ending the legacy publishing model. Since journal publishers are middlemen that add almost no actual value to the publication process, their revenue stems from access control to published content. The new law removes a large amount of future content from their control, making them more reliant on open access fees. If other countries follow the EU's lead then eventually we will reach a critical mass of open content where the subscription model is no longer tenable. At such a point, stakeholders would be confronted with the obvious question: "Why are we paying a publishing company--which relies on volunteer authors, peer reviewers, and editors--to upload this content to the internet for free?". The next step is collective action to bypass the big publishers altogether, such as restricting grant money from going toward open access fees.

jbmorgado• 10 years ago

Clearly you - and many people commenting here - have no idea how the business model works and keep making these comments of: "don't mess with the free market."

Explained in a very simple way:

- Researchers do the heavy work, carrying out the research and writing up the articles: they don't get a cent from publishers (sometimes they even have to pay to publish).

- Reviewers, since of the most knowledgeable researchers in the area, take their time and knowledge to check what the researchers did: they also don't get a cent from publishers.

- Publishers, get all the work already done and charge money - stupid amounts of money like 30eur per article - to let other researchers see the works.

Researchers have nothing to lose by cutting the publisher. We are not wasting any money - on the contrary - for demanding free access.

Seriously, people should stop commenting themes they simply don't have a clue about.

couac• 10 years ago

This was a big announcement, but there was no action defined at the time of the announcement. I wrote about it several months ago, because I had many questions following this news: https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-recent-....

peter3032• 10 years ago

Shift cost to author and grant agencies then. A couple of studies I have read says it costs about $1500 to review edit and publish an article. In addition several thousand dolars of volunteer time is provided by editors and reviewers. If the subscribers wont be paying, then costs will shifted to the author. Some free online journals already only charge the author.

yiyus3• 10 years ago

Do you have a link to those studies? I would really like to know where those $1500 are being spent.

hackaflocka• 10 years ago

Thank goodness for Europe.

denzell• 10 years ago

Why? whats next? Free newspapers.. free travel.. let's close all businesses.

djhworld• 10 years ago

The EU provides a lot of funding for science projects across the union, this funding comes from member states, who raise money through taxation.

So in effect you have EU citizens paying for research to be done, but have to double-dip on the papers or artefacts that come out as a result of the research.

This initiative is designed to make publicly funded research.....public, and not held behind a paywall provided by a private entity.

Practicality3• 10 years ago

I didn't down-vote you, because you ask a valid question.

However, free newspapers and travel sounds good to me.

If all/most resources were free it would then be just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on.

There doesn't really seem to be much negative, other than current business models fading away. However, I don't think most people would care much if all businesses did close and were replaced with a different economic model. (Not that I have one in mind, just that I don't think we need to be attached to the current business model)

paulddraper4• 10 years ago

just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time

zakk4• 10 years ago

That's incredibly stupid. The publishing of scientific papers has a cost, in terms of editorial service, proofreading, typesetting.

This cost will be paid by scientists, rather than by the readers. In other words, the papers will be free to read, but won't be free to publish.

I know as a fact that smaller research groups struggle to pay current publishing fees, and as a matter of fact the EU decision will increase them, making the situation worse.

Faaak• 10 years ago

Have you actually published an article ?

Publishers now don't even do editorial service. They give you a template you must follow and the actual (free) reviewers tell you if you write good english or not.

zakk4• 10 years ago

I've published nine, the tenth is under review.

Whenever I published an article most often I got my references corrected, some grammar errors where spotted during the publishing process (I am not a native English speaker), also my articles are professionally typeset.

Maybe we work in different fields, don't assume your point of view automatically extends to every field of science.

JohnStrange5• 10 years ago

Sorry, perhaps this differs from field to field but at least in mine what you say is patently false.

Journals have no linguistic editing, no proofreading, and the typesetting is outsourced to India - at least Springer does so, as I know from personal interaction with the typesetters. Articles must be delivered more or less camera-ready according to the journal style. Editorial boards and all editors, as well as as reviewers work for free.

If you have a research group that actually pays for being published, then that's called "grey literature" or even worse, just plain self-publication, and it's worth nothing. It can even have a negative impact on your CV.

zakk4• 10 years ago

Your last sentence is completely false, at least as far as the physical sciences are concerned.

The most prestigious journals have a publication fee. I know for sure that Nature Communications has a pretty hefty fee, more than 5000$, google it. And, trust me, publishing there has a pretty positive impact on your CV.

The same concept applies to all open-access journals, including the most prestigious ones.

You may want to revise your definition of "grey literature".

yiyus3• 10 years ago

This will be probably be postponed to 2022. Then, in 2021, they will say that papers will be free only for 90 days.

smhg• 10 years ago

On what is this based?

You mean similar to the timing for the abolishment if roaming costs?

yiyus3• 10 years ago

Yep

bobthechef2• 10 years ago

Because I don't generally believe altruism is a thing in politics, the majority of the article is just fluff and smoke. Scientific literacy? What a crock. Scientific papers aren't for boosting the kind of basic scientific literacy the links to. They are generally written for an already literate audience (putting aside the poor quality of a great deal of science and scientific papers). The overriding pragmatic motive here is hinted at in the following sentence:

"Ultimately, this decision comes as a result of a meeting by the Competitiveness Council,which includes the ministers of Science, Innovation, Trade, and Industry."

EU science, being what it is, needs to be more competitive. One way to become competitive in the face American or even Japanese competition is to take the open source/free software route and make research freely available. This makes the research more accessible, unburdens relatively poor European universities from having to pay expensive journal memberships, increases the ability of EU institutions to collaborate, and allows the EU to attract collaborators from abroad by removing financial thresholds. And because science in the US has stronger ties to industry, it plays an important role in determining the economic prowess of the US. Poor entrepreneurs can also benefit from the move. The EU is likely aiming in a similar direction (though I personally know members of European academia who dislike the collaboration between academia and industry).

r721• 10 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271

kahrkunne2• 10 years ago

Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles? I mean, as a scientist, this benefits me, but I can see why your average Joe wouldn't be happy to pay taxes so he can read articles he can't understand...

542458• 10 years ago

That's a little elitist of you. There are lots of people outside academia who can understand and benefit from academic publications.

Consider, for example, somebody thinking of creating a startup doing research on what the bleeding edge of a field is. Or a former student considering re-entering academic research checking up on how the field has progressed since they left it. Or simply an independent researcher trying to understand if what they've created is novel and publishable.

noobiemcfoob2• 10 years ago

That's a fair point, but it doesn't invalidate the parent's point. Ultimately, there will be far more laypeople who cannot understand the articles than budding, academically inclined entrepreneurs.

thr0waway123911• 10 years ago

Not to mention the many average Joes who have already done some important work by reading open access papers in fields simply because they suddenly find causes to became motivated to go past the average Joe level.

http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/

kahrkunne2• 10 years ago

I'm saying average. I wouldn't pay for biology studies because I don't understand them, so I don't see why an accountant should be paying for CS studies he doesn't understand. I'm just trying to warn about having taxpayers pay for things that realistically 95% of them are never gonna use.

noobiemcfoob2• 10 years ago

Isn't that true of most public systems? Namely that everyone pays for resources that will ultimately be used by a small percentage?

a3_nm4• 10 years ago

Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles?

Everyone was already paying for them before. The money that used to be collected on the sale of articles has never gone to finance the scientists making the work.

danjoc• 10 years ago

Does this include data sets used for publication? If so, is there a specified format for publishing data sets?

MrForken2• 10 years ago

Notice the would Should in this headliner.

MrForken2• 10 years ago

Hmm the word Should is an indicator of where this is going

daveguy• 10 years ago

Cough sci-hub Cough

Edit: a few of the links on the wiki page still link to it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

They also have a Facebook page and an onion route.

Retr0spectrum• 10 years ago

I reckon the existence of scihub might have prompted this decision. In that case, the project is a success.

snvzz• 10 years ago

Why wait until 2020?

This should be effective today, while giving a few month grace period at most.

JohnStrange5• 10 years ago

And who protects the researchers?

The same people who demand this open access also advocate research evaluation criteria that mostly count the number of publications in top journals owned by Springer, Elsevier, etc.

tiatia• 10 years ago

The EU announces? Didn't the EU announce that EU roaming should be free by 2017? Last thing I read that now this has a dozen limitations, including a time limitation of 90days and only if the SIM has been used in the home country for a while. Ok. Now lets see how this turns out.

mordae• 10 years ago

JUST GIVE THE MONEY TO LIBRARIES!

lrmunoz• 10 years ago

After the final recommendation the European Commission has proposed about the abolition of roaming charges [1] I'm very skeptical about this type of announcement. Still publishers won't probably be able to lobby as hard as telcos though

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free...

aabbcc1241• 10 years ago

can we just put every paper on github ?

quirkot• 10 years ago

The demarcation problem just became the most important problem in publishing

faragon• 10 years ago

Why are not already free? Most EU scientific institutions take tons of public money (even private scientific institutions).

JohnStrange5• 10 years ago

Because the journals held by a few global players (Elsevier, Springer, Oxford Journals) are the most prestigious ones, and a researcher's career and funding hinges almost solely on the number of his publications/year in prestigious journals.

fithisux• 10 years ago

The next step would be to make all drivers open source by 2020.

stcredzero3• 10 years ago

Some studies have concluded that there is now more social mobility in Europe than in the US. Now I see more and more "bellwether" laws and executive actions coming from Europe first. Does this mean that the US, being at the top of the hierarchy and in charge of the world's largest empire, has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers, much as Britain did to the United States in the 19th and 20th century?

paulddraper4• 10 years ago

First in line to Disneyland, or first in line at the suicide booth?

Direction is as important as order, so a criticism of "not first" must be more nuanced.

stcredzero3• 10 years ago

Please provide a quote and explain why you interpreted my comment as a criticism? Once you do so, then explain why your interpretation is more applicable than an interpretation as a non-criticism.

gogopuppygogo• 10 years ago

The U.S. is heading in a direction that will cede control of ICANN. I can't imagine a more inept proposition...

EGreg• 10 years ago

Does freely accessible mean copies can be hosted by anyone anywhere?

I would say that fingerprinting is still useful, to knowthat the original information hasn't been tampered with.

Why do we need publishers again?

pietro• 10 years ago

The EU hasn't "announced" anything. There was a meeting between several influential people connected to the EU, and they reached an informal agreement on something related to freely accessible research. The "announcement" is nothing but the minutes of that meeting.

somid3• 10 years ago

This is such an incredible feat that I just want to trow a note here so I can reference in the future to show off. If the metric of global innovation has an exponential power, this act alone will likely increase that power by 10%

carapace• 10 years ago

(Thin sans-serif body text means you hate your readers. Making it grey means you really hate them.)

alekhkhanna• 10 years ago

Wasn't this news 3 months back ?

EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

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