All scientific articles
in Europe must be freely accessible as of 2020. EU member states want to
achieve optimal reuse of research data. They are also looking into a European
visa for foreign start-up founders.
And, according to the new Innovation Principle, new
European legislation must take account of its impact on innovation. These are
the main outcomes of the meeting of the Competitiveness Council in Brussels on
27 May.
Sharing knowledge freely
Under the presidency of Netherlands State
Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker, the EU ministers
responsible for research and innovation decided unanimously to take these
significant steps.
Mr Dekker is pleased that these ambitions have been
translated into clear agreements to maximise the impact of research. ‘Research
and innovation generate economic growth and more jobs and provide solutions to
societal challenges,’ the state secretary said. ‘And that means a stronger
Europe. To achieve that, Europe must be as attractive as possible for
researchers and start-ups to locate here and for companies to invest. That
calls for knowledge to be freely shared. The time for talking about open access
is now past. With these agreements, we are going to achieve it in
practice.’
Open
access
Open access means that scientific
publications on the results of research supported by public and public-private
funds must be freely accessible to everyone. That is not yet the case. The
results of publicly funded research are currently not accessible to people
outside universities and knowledge institutions. As a result, teachers, doctors
and entrepreneurs do not have access to the latest scientific insights that are
so relevant to their work, and universities have to take out expensive
subscriptions with publishers to gain access to publications.
Reusing research data
From 2020, all scientific publications on
the results of publicly funded research must be freely available. It also must
be able to optimally reuse research data. To achieve that, the data must be
made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for
example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues.
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