13 January 2008

ERC Goes Big on OA

Here's an impressively strong commitment to open access from the European Research Council:


The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.

Notice that's into repositories immediately, and full open access within six months. But what struck me particularly were two additional aspects.

The first was support for open data that's one of the strongest I've seen so far:

The ERC considers essential that primary data - which in the life sciences for example could comprise data such as nucleotide/protein sequences, macromolecular atomic coordinates and anonymized epidemiological data - are deposited to the relevant databases as soon as possible, preferably immediately after publication and in any case not later than 6 months after the date of publication.

There was also a nice sting in the tail, too:

The ERC is keenly aware of the desirability to shorten the period between publication and open access beyond the currently accepted standard of 6 months.

Translated: you ain't seen nuffink yet.

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