---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:25:45 +0100
From: Eloy Rodrigues <eloy AT sdum.uminho.pt>
To: 'Peter Suber' <peters AT earlham.edu>
Cc: 'Stevan Harnad' <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
The EUA - European University Association has established an Working Group
on Open Access.
http://www.eua.be:8080/eua/jsp/en/client/item_view.jsp?type_id=1&item_id=3339
Open Access ^Ö EUA Establishes a Working Group
In response to the growing interest in the issue of Open Access to Research
Publications, a meeting was held 29 June to bring together EUA Council
Members who had expressed a strong interest in the subject to discuss future
actions. The meeting aimed to review the involvement of National Rectors^Ò
Conferences in current developments on the issue and to consider what
complementary role and actions EUA could take at European level to ensure
universities^Ò interests are represented in the ongoing debate. Additionally,
the authors (Françoise Vandooren and Mathias Dewatripont, Université Libre
de Bruxelles, Belgium) of the recent report ^ÓStudy on the economic and
technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe^Ô,
undertaken for the European Commission Directorate General for Research,
were invited to present their findings and recommendations to the meeting.
A strong consensus emerged at the meeting that European universities have a
clear vested interest in becoming actively engaged in the debate as a
stakeholder, not least because of the public funding implications of the
markedly rising costs of scientific journals for university libraries, and
the potential prospects and opportunities that ICT and digital publishing
developments provide for open access. It was felt that EUA should respond to
the increasing prominence of this issue ^Ö emphasised by key conferences to
be organised by the European Commission and the German EU Presidency in 2007
- by undertaking awareness-raising initiatives and developing policy
positions at European level. The overall recommendation of the meeting was
that EUA should establish an ^ÓAd Hoc Working Group on Open Access^Ô (chaired
by Sybolt Noorda, VSNU, The Netherlands) comprised of experts in the field
nominated by the National Rectors^Ò Conferences. The Working Group membership
and work programme will be presented at the next Council meeting in October
2006.
[I hope] that the European University Rectors will maintain the focus in
what they can do (mandate self-archiving of their institutions research
outputs), and not get ^Ólost^Ô in discussions on models of publishing,
journals subscriptions prices and conditions etc.
Eloy Rodrigues
Universidade do Minho - Serviços de Documentação
Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga
Tel: +351 253 60 41 50; Fax - 253 60 41 59
Campus de Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães
Tel: +351 253 51 01 19; Fax - 253 51 01 17
Received on Thu Jul 20 2006 - 16:29:48 BST