Tuesday, January 30, 2007

EURAB proposes making open access obligatory for FP7 research

The European Research Advisory Board (EURAB)
has published its Report and Recommendations on "Scientific Publication: policy on open access" (December 2006). Here's the press release. Professor Jane Grimson (School of Computer Science and Statistics and former Vice-Provost, Trinity College Dublin) chaired the EURAB Working Group responsible for the report.

Comments on EURAB's recommendations and proposed mandate by advocates of Open Access Peter Suber and Steve Harnad have been very positive.

Read the EURAB recommendations in full here.

European petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

A group of European organisations has launched a petition to the European Commission calling on it to support public access to research outputs shortly after their publication, guaranteeing open access to publicly funded research.

Organised by SPARC Europe, JISC, SURF, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF), the petition urges the Commission to follow the lead of other research funding agencies in mandating the publication of articles arising from EC-related funding after a given time period in open access archives. It also calls on the Commission to explore a European-wide approach to policies and practices surrounding the development of digital repositories as a means of making more visible the fruits of European research and maximising the return on public investment in research.

For further information on the petition, and to sign it, please go to: EC petition

Monday, January 29, 2007

Trinity's Access to Research Archive (TARA)

Trinity's Access to Research Archive (TARA) is an open access repository containing scholarly publications, electronic theses, images, 'grey literature' and e-publishing outputs of Trinity College Dublin.