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Language: en
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# 52012SC0222

**COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT IMPACT ASSESSMENT Accompanying the document COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION ON ACCESS TO AND PRESERVATION OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE /\* SWD/2012/0222 final \*/**

  

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Accompanying the document

COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION

ON ACCESS TO AND PRESERVATION OF
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1........... Background, procedural issues
and consultation of interested parties................................ 7

1.1........ Introduction.................................................................................................................... 7

1.2........ Background.................................................................................................................... 7

1.3........ External expertise and studies.......................................................................................... 9

1.4........ Public consultations directly
linked to the current policy process..................................... 10

1.5........ Opinion of the Impact Assessment
Board...................................................................... 12

2........... Problem definition......................................................................................................... 13

2.1........ Context and economic impact....................................................................................... 13

2.2........ Problems to be addressed............................................................................................. 15

2.2.1..... Access to research publications..................................................................................... 15

2.2.1.1.. Journal subscription prices
increase and library budgets are under pressure.................... 16

2.2.1.2.. The development of the open access
movement............................................................. 18

2.2.2..... Accessibility of research data........................................................................................ 22

2.2.3..... Preservation of scientific content.................................................................................... 25

2.2.3.1.. Preservation of scientific journals................................................................................... 25

2.2.3.2.. Preservation of scientific data........................................................................................ 26

2.3........ Stakeholder analysis: who is
affected and how?............................................................. 26

2.3.1..... Researchers.................................................................................................................. 26

2.3.2..... Businesses, including SMEs.......................................................................................... 27

2.3.3..... Scientific publishers....................................................................................................... 27

2.3.4..... Governments (national/ sub-state
level).......................................................................... 27

2.3.5..... Academic institutions (including
their libraries)................................................................ 27

2.3.6..... Citizens........................................................................................................................ 28

2.4........ The EU dimension........................................................................................................ 28

2.4.1..... Treaty Base.................................................................................................................. 28

2.4.2..... Subsidiarity test............................................................................................................ 28

2.5........ Baseline scenario.......................................................................................................... 29

2.5.1..... Fragmentation of national OA policies........................................................................... 29

2.5.2..... Divergence regarding developing
the e-infrastructure for open access............................. 29

2.5.3..... Fragmentation regarding research
data.......................................................................... 30

2.5.4..... Lack of preservation policies in
EU............................................................................... 30

2.6........ Conclusion on the baseline
scenario............................................................................... 31

3........... Objectives.................................................................................................................... 32

3.1........ General policy objectives and
more specific/operational objectives................................. 32

3.2........ Related policies............................................................................................................ 35

3.2.1..... EU growth strategy Europe 2020 and
its flagship initiatives............................................ 35

3.2.2..... EU policy in the area of open data................................................................................. 35

3.2.3..... Horizon 2020 and the European
Research Area (ERA) framework................................ 35

3.2.4..... The Commission's policy regarding
open access in the programmes for research and innovation           36

3.2.5..... The Commission's journal
publication scheme................................................................ 36

3.3........ The international framework.......................................................................................... 37

4........... Policy options............................................................................................................... 39

4.1........ Discontinuing existing EU action.................................................................................... 39

4.2........ No policy change (Baseline scenario)............................................................................ 39

4.3........ Providing a policy framework to
MS in the form of soft law........................................... 41

4.4........ Approximation of MS legislation................................................................................... 42

5........... Assessment of the options............................................................................................. 43

5.1........ Discontinuing existing EU action.................................................................................... 43

5.1.1..... Impacts related to access, re-use
and preservation of scientific information..................... 43

5.1.2..... Economic impact.......................................................................................................... 43

5.1.3..... Impact on stakeholders................................................................................................. 44

5.1.3.1.. Impact on researchers................................................................................................... 44

5.1.3.2.. Impact on academic libraries......................................................................................... 44

5.1.3.3.. Impact on scientific publishers....................................................................................... 44

5.1.4..... Financial impact............................................................................................................ 44

5.1.5..... Social & environmental impacts..................................................................................... 44

5.2........ No policy change (baseline
scenario)............................................................................. 44

5.2.1..... Impacts related to access, re-use
and preservation of scientific information..................... 45

5.2.2..... Economic impact.......................................................................................................... 45

5.2.3..... Impact on stakeholders:................................................................................................ 45

5.2.3.1.. Impact on researchers................................................................................................... 45

5.2.3.2.. Impact on academic libraries......................................................................................... 45

5.2.3.3.. Impact on scientific publishers....................................................................................... 46

5.2.4..... Financial impact............................................................................................................ 46

5.2.5..... Social & environmental impacts..................................................................................... 46

5.3........ Implementation of a policy
framework by a Recommendation to Member States............ 46

5.3.1..... Implementation in relation to
scientific publications......................................................... 46

5.3.1.1.. General impact: Better access to
scientific publications and wider economic benefits....... 46

5.3.1.2.. Specific impacts on stakeholders................................................................................... 47

5.3.2..... Implementation in relation to open
access to research data............................................. 56

5.3.3..... Implementation in relation to
preservation...................................................................... 57

5.3.4..... Effects of scale............................................................................................................. 58

5.3.5..... Conclusion................................................................................................................... 58

5.4........ Approximation of MS legislation................................................................................... 58

5.5........ Comparison of the policy options.................................................................................. 59

5.6........ Evaluation of the administrative
burden.......................................................................... 63

5.7........ Conclusion................................................................................................................... 63

6........... Monitoring and evaluation............................................................................................. 64

6.1........ Continuous monitoring.................................................................................................. 64

6.2........ Evaluation..................................................................................................................... 64

Annex 1: Main aspects of the scientific
information system............................................................ 65

Annex 2: Executive summary of the 2011
Questionnaire to European Research Area Council....... 81

Annex 3: Survey on Open Access in FP7 –
summary of responses............................................... 85

Annex 4: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
about Open Access.............................................. 88

Annex 5 – Key indicators on OA publishing in
MS...................................................................... 90

Annex 6 - Glossary..................................................................................................................... 92

1.           Background,
procedural issues and consultation of interested parties

1.1.        Introduction

This Impact Assessment accompanies
the Recommendation from the Commission to the Member States on access to
and preservation of scientific information.

One of the ways in which Europe aims to
tackle its structurally low growth rate is by creating optimal conditions for
innovation. According to the March 2010 Communication from the Commission
Europe 2020,[1] knowledge and innovation
are essential to future growth. Innovation can be enhanced via knowledge
sharing, which in turn can be supported by Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT).

Indeed, as a result of the institutional
and public debate subsequent to the 2007 Commission Communication on
scientific information in the digital age,[2] which was
followed by Council Conclusions on Scientific Information,[3] a number of key areas
have been identified where effective action by and between Member States could
deliver significant gains for Europe's research and innovation system. This
would help to create the "fifth freedom" in Europe - the free circulation
of knowledge across the European Union (EU). By improving and facilitating
efficient access to world-class scientific knowledge for large communities of
researchers, SMEs and citizens, it would also foster Europe's wider
competitiveness and enable a better understanding of society and the
environment.

The specific challenges in the area of
scientific information and the accompanying actions are spelled out in a Communication
and in a Recommendation to the Member States. The Communication
will take stock of recent developments and will set out the way in
which the Commission will promote and implement open access within its research
programmes. The Recommendation, the object of this impact
assessment, will suggest a concrete set of actions to be implemented by
Member States.

The Commission is also planning to table a
Communication on a Unified European Research Area to Foster Efficiency,
Excellence and Growth. The Communication will inter alia address open
access with a cross reference to the Recommendation on access to and
preservation of scientific information (the Impact Assessment of the Communication
was initially submitted on 29 February 2012).

1.2.        Background

In order for Europe to become an
increasingly competitive knowledge-based economy, it is vital to improve not
only the production of knowledge, but also access to and dissemination of the
results of scientific research, in particular those resulting from publicly
funded and co-funded research.

In 2010, the Commission adopted the Europe
2020 Flagship Initiatives Innovation Union,[4]
and the Digital Agenda for Europe.[5] Both
Communications make reference to open access (OA) as a means to work towards achieving
the Europe 2020 objectives. They underline the importance of promoting
better access to the results of publicly funded research, and introduce
open access as the general principle for projects funded by EU research
framework programmes.

Widening the availability and accessibility
of scientific information is an essential part of the Commission's open data
policy, which was underlined as a priority in the recent Communication[6]
on Open Data adopted by the Commission on 12th December 2011. The document
reflected the basic principle that scientific results resulting from EU
publicly funded and co-funded research should be used as widely as possible.

A further strategic policy issue is the development
and implementation of a European Research Area (ERA). The ERA is composed
of all research and development activities, programmes and policies in Europe
which involve a transnational perspective.[7] Together, they
will enable researchers, research institutions and businesses to increasingly
circulate, compete and co-operate across borders. The aim is to give them
access to a Europe-wide open space for knowledge and technologies in which
transnational synergies and complementarities are fully exploited. In this
context, questions of access to and preservation of digital scientific
information remain highly relevant.

The 2007 Council Conclusions on Scientific
Information[8] also invited the
Commission to experiment with open access to scientific results emanating from
projects funded by EU research framework programmes. In August 2008, the
Commission launched the Open Access Pilot in the Seventh Framework
programme for Research and Development.[9] The Commission has
collected feedback on experiences with the pilot through a survey sent to the co-ordinators
of 811 projects. The 194 answers received provide important input for the
future of the OA policy and practices in Horizon 2020. A summary of responses
to this survey is available in Annex 3.

On 30 November 2011 the Commission adopted
its proposal for the Horizon 2020 programme.[10] The programme
will, from 2014 onwards, combine European research and innovation funding in
one single framework. In the context of Horizon 2020, open access, which refers
to the policy and practice of granting immediate and free internet access to
scientific results (including peer-reviewed journal articles), will become a
basic principle for the dissemination of EU publicly funded research[11].
The specific rules which will apply to the dissemination of the results of projects
funded under Horizon 2020 will be spelled out in the implementing provisions of
this programme.

The initiative to improve the access to and
preservation of scientific information is co-lead by DG INFSO & DG RTD.[12]

An Impact Assessment steering group was set
up to accompany the preparation of the IA report. The following Directorate-Generals
(DGs) and services were invited: SG,
SJ, COMP, EAC, ENTR, ENV, MARKT, MARE, JRC, ERCEA, CLIMA, MOVE, ENER, OP. The first meeting of the steering group took place on 7 April 2011,
and a subsequent meeting was held on 14 October 2011.

A first version of this impact assessment
was submitted to the Impact Assessment board on 9 November 2011. The current
text takes up the suggestions made by the Board.

1.3.        External
expertise and studies

The Commission
has monitored and taken into consideration the large number of reports and
studies undertaken in this field.[13]&[14]&[15]
In addition it has financed several projects and studies that assess different
aspects of the access to and the preservation of scientific information, inter
alia:

·
The project Study of Open Access Publishing[16]
(SOAP) looked into business models that have emerged over the last years,
identifying stakeholders, risks, opportunities and essential requirements for a
smooth transition to OA publishing[17] (also called Gold OA);

·
The on-going project Publishing and the
Ecology of European Research[18] (PEER) investigates the
effects of large-scale, systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed
manuscripts (also called Green OA) on reader access, author visibility, and
journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research;

·
Further information comes from the project Open
Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe[19]
(OpenAIRE), set up in 2009, which is building an e-infrastructure of
interoperable repositories accessible via a single portal. It also has set up a
network of helpdesks in the Member States, as well as a system to monitor and systematically
gather information on the deposit of OA peer reviewed papers.[20]

·
The report ‘Riding the Wave: How Europe
can gain from the rising tide of scientific data’[21]
which resulted from the work of the High Level Group on Scientific Data
Infrastructures, specifically looked into the multiple challenges of access to
and preservation of the large amounts of research data produced by modern
science.

·
Two participatory strategic policy workshops, one with national experts and one with representatives of the many
relevant EC-projects on access and preservation issues, took place in late 2010
and early 2011.[22]

Further input
has been gathered through networking, exchange of information, participation to
conferences or meetings and informal discussions with stakeholders over recent
years.

1.4.        Public
consultations directly linked to the current policy process

In accordance with established Commission
standards, the Commission organised a public hearing on the access to
and preservation of scientific information, which was followed by a wide-ranging
on-line public consultation. A roadmap on the initiative was prepared and
made publicly available.[23]

The public
hearing was held on 30 May 2011 in Luxembourg and brought together circa 40
representatives from the scientific publishing community, research funding
organisations, universities, research libraries, academia and Member States.[24]
The hearing allowed interested parties to present and discuss their views on research
evaluation systems, preservation of scientific outputs and access to scientific
information (including OA).

The on-line public consultation on
scientific information in the digital age was open from 15 July 2011 until
9 September 2011. All interested parties, including national and regional governments,
research funding organisations, universities and research centres, libraries, publishers
(both for profit and not for profit), researchers, as well as the
public-at-large, were invited to contribute. The consultation yielded 1140
replies from 42 countries and the Commission also received 19 position
papers.[25]

Figure 1: Respondents to the on-line public
consultation by group of stakeholder; absolute number of respondents per group
of stakeholder.

Box: on-line public consultation on
scientific information in the digital age – key results

Respondents
identified a strong need for better access to scientific publications and
scientific data in Europe. 90% of respondents supported the idea that
publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of
principle, be in open access (OA) mode and that data from publicly funded
research should be available for reuse, free of charge, on the Internet.

Furthermore,
83% called for policy formulation at EU level.

These findings are also reflected in the
open access chapter of the on-line public consultation on the ERA Framework
entitled "Areas of untapped potential for the development of the European
Research Area (ERA)," which was open from 13.September 2011 to 30 November
2011.[26] 590 responses were
received from a variety of stakeholders.

Box: ERA on-line public consultation – main
results concerning open access

·
A very high number of participants responded to
the questions on open access to publications and data; among these respondents,
84% rate this area of intervention as important.

·
A high number of respondents agreed that access
to scientific publications (75%) and scientific data (81%) in the ERA needs to
be improved.

·
88% agreed that open access to scientific
publications and open data can enhance knowledge circulation in the ERA.

·
The most important barriers to open access and
open data include: insufficient awareness of the research community; insufficient
member states policies on open access to data; insufficient coordination on
member states policies and an insufficient pan European e-infrastructure for
depositing; as well as insufficient interoperability.

·
Respondents across the different categories
acknowledged the key role of the European Commission in coordinating Member
State initiatives, monitoring researchers' compliance and promoting open access
policies to publications and data.

The results of these public consultations
are used throughout this document in relation to the specific issues at stake.

1.5.        Opinion
of the Impact Assessment Board

Following the Opinions of the Impact
Assessment Board on previous versions of this report, this report has undergone
considerable changes.

·
The problem analysis has been strengthened, by
focussing on fewer problem drivers, clearly structuring them according to the
three problem areas – access to research publications, access to research data
and preservation of both publications and data.

·
The framework of objectives, both specific and
operational objectives has been entirely rewritten. A chart has been added. The
link between the problem analysis and the policy intervention has been
highlighted more clearly. Trade-offs are described in the assessment of the
impacts, again including charts. The key operational objectives now include
some specific and clearly timed targets.

·
The policy options have been partly rewritten – in
its entirety for the soft law and the approximation of legislation options. The
focus is now on a policy framework and its content rather than on instruments
of delivery. The comparison between the soft law option and the option of
approximation of laws is presented in a new, clearer way. The baseline scenario
has been strengthened by adding further aspects of the likely development
without further EU policy intervention.

·
The link with the ERA Communication (no longer a
Framework Directive) and with Horizon 2020, including the way in which the
Commission will deal with the research results stemming from its own projects
has been clarified. These initiatives have been subject to a separate impact
assessment. Also the link to the Commission's Open Data strategy is now clearly
described.

·
The analysis of the impacts has been entirely
rewritten, in particular to address in great detail the concerns brought
forward by for-profit scientific publishers. This category includes learned
societies. The IA now also pays more attention between the economic and in
particular the contractual relations between publishers and the researchers.

·
The aspects of costs and benefits for MS have
been presented in an entirely new way, including the robustness of the research
that the analysis builds on. The economic impacts on research intensive
countries are now also spelled out not only in terms of the expected overall
savings, but also in terms of the costs in relation to R&D spending.

·
Several other elements of substance have been
significantly reinforced at the request of the IAB:

1.
The issue of the relationship between OA and copyright
transfers and alternative models for licensing are now discussed in the text;

2.
The analysis on VAT related issues has been
expanded, although the substance of VAT reform is dealt with in a different
context.

3.
The international dimension has been reinforced.
This covers international arrangements, as well as the aspect of potential
unilateral benefits accruing in third countries.

4.
The importance of the initiative for SMEs has
been further highlighted.

5.
The need for EU intervention in light of the
current experience with the development of policies in MS.

·
Results from the stakeholder consultation are
integrated into the body of the problem analysis.

2.           Problem
definition

2.1.        Context
and economic impact

In 1676, Isaac
Newton famously wrote that "if I have seen further it is by standing on
ye sholders of Giants." Today, it is truer than ever that all research
builds on previous work and depends on scientists' ability to access and share
scientific information. The advent of the Internet and electronic publishing
has resulted in unprecedented possibilities for the dissemination and exchange
of information. In
today's "information
economy", knowledge is a source of competitive advantage. For this reason
alone, it is politically and economically crucial that there be wide and
instant access to scientific information. The wide range of benefits to this
would include:

–
acceleration of the research and discovery process,
leading to increased returns on R&D investment;

–
avoidance of the duplication of research
efforts, leading to savings in R&D expenditure;

–
enhanced opportunities for multi-disciplinary
research, as well as inter-institutional and inter-sectorial collaborations;

–
broader and faster opportunities for the
adoption and commercialisation of research findings, generating increased
returns on public investment in R&D and the potential for the emergence of
new industries based on scientific information.

A
recent study[27] estimated
the overall economic benefit from increased access to (publicly and
privately funded) scientific information for the EU 27 at €6 billion a year.
This implies potential economic benefits from increased access to scientific publications
emanating from public funding at €1.8 billion a year.

The effect of limited access
to scientific information on the competitiveness of SMEs was recently
documented by a Danish Ministry for Research and Innovation report on access to
scientific and technical information for innovative SMEs.[28]
It illustrates the difficulties that SMEs in Denmark face in accessing research
articles, patent information, scientific and technical standards, technical
information, and market intelligence. The report states that it takes 2.2
years longer to develop or introduce new products without speedy access to
up-to-date scientific research. For new products, a delay of 2.2 years
means an average revenue loss of about 36 million DKK for Danish SMEs. The
report concludes that there is a need for easier and cheaper access to research
articles, patents, laws and regulations, and market information.

The
potential benefits of better access to scientific information should be seen in
the context of the high investment in R&D across the EU. This reached €245,673 billion in 2010 (2%
of GDP)[29], a rise of 43.5 % in ten years.[30]
A large part of investment in research in the EU is publicly funded (35%)[31],
which gives the public sector an important say in determining how results should
be disseminated for the benefit of economic growth and the society at large.[32]
It is therefore crucial for public authorities to define ways to improve public
access to the results of publicly funded research, in order for the maximum benefit
to be drawn from Europe's investment in science.

Estimates[33] put the
worldwide Science Technical and Medical (STM) publishing market (which includes
journals, books, and secondary information services) at USD 16 billion (ca. EUR
11.6 billion). It is estimated that journal sales account for about 50% of the
total STM publishing market, with a market value of USD 8 billion in 2008, up
by 6-7% compared to 2007. . The total European STM publishing market was worth
some EUR 2.4 -3.2 billion in 2008, giving it a 30%-40% of the total global STM
publishing market[34].

Scientific publishing remains a solid and
profitable industry, despite the economic crisis, the advent of the Internet,
and the development of new business models and market entrants. For example,
Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of scientific journals with almost 2000
journal titles, performed relatively well during the recession. In 2010, it
made GBP 724 million (EUR 841 million) on revenues of GBP 2 billion (EUR 2.3
billion), an operating-profit margin of 36%.[35] Similarly,
the results of Springer in 2010 were strong, with revenues reaching EUR 866
million and its EBITDA[36] reaching EUR 294 million,
representing a 33.9 % return on sales. The Oxford University Press also
presented solid results in March 2011, lead by solid sales growth in its
academic arm.[37]

2.2.        Problems
to be addressed

On-line public consultations on both scientific
information and the ERA highlight limited access to scientific publications
and data as a key barrier towards the circulation of knowledge in Europe. In
fact, the scholarly dissemination system is confronted with a series of
problems that prevent European researchers from making full use of an
integrated system of practices and infrastructures that allow easy, open access
to, and re-use of, research results.

The 3 basic problems are: 1) limited access
to research publications/scientific journals; 2) limited access to research
data and 3) the preservation of scientific information (publications
and data) for long-term access and use. These issues, which are often
interconnected, are discussed in more detail below. Further background
information on the scholarly communication and dissemination system is
presented in Annex 1.

2.2.1.     Access
to research publications

The Internet has radically
changed the way in which scientific publications are disseminated and
consulted. Almost 90% of all scientific journals are now available online, yet
scientific content is usually not freely available to the general public.[38]
Appropriate access to scientific content on which to build new research is of
crucial importance for the research community. Researchers' access remains
linked to their affiliations with universities or other institutions (e.g.
research funding organisations, libraries, governments). Therefore, access to
this online scientific content relies not just on having Internet access, but
on the journal subscriptions that only large institutions and their libraries
can afford.

In many cases, this leads to limited
access to scientific journals for individual researchers, SMEs and citizens
at large. A large majority (83%) of respondents to the on-line public
consultation on scientific information, in particular libraries and
researchers, disagreed, or strongly disagreed, with the statement that there
is no access problem in terms of scientific publications in Europe. This is
supported by findings from the EU-funded study, PEER:[39]
34.4% of respondents have very often, or quite often, been unable to get 'quick
and easy access to the peer-reviewed journal article' they would like to
consult. 42.8% report that this has 'sometimes' been the case.[40]
Only 22% of respondents say that they 'rarely' experience difficulties in
accessing peer-reviewed articles. Limited access to scientific journals, and
the resulting limitation of the dissemination and circulation of knowledge, restricts
understanding of the latest research results, narrows the scope of obtained
knowledge, stifles new scientific discoveries, and hinders progress in research
and innovation, and, consequently, jobs and growth in Europe. Limited access
restricts both the visibility of scientific research results, and their wider use.

Scientific publishing is a significant
economic and profitable activity in its own right, publishers are eager to
maintain the current status quo. Scientific publishers indicate in support of
their case that access to scientific articles has never been better, in
particular thanks to so-called "big deals", that is, bundles of
journals that cost less than the sum of subscriptions to all the individual
journals in the bundle. [41]

Limited access does not only affect
European researchers and libraries. As the Danish study cited above[42]
demonstrates, SMEs, and in particular high-technology SMEs, face
significant hurdles to access scientific content which they consider important
for the success of their companies.[43] The 2009 "Access by
UK small and medium-sized enterprises to professional and academic
information" reported that that 55% of SMEs had recently experienced
difficulty accessing research articles.[44]

2.2.1.1.  Journal subscription prices increase and library budgets
are under pressure

A majority (89%) of the respondents to the on-line public consultation on
scientific information identified the high prices of journals/subscriptions
as the major barrier to access to scientific articles in Europe. Limited
library budgets (85%) were also flagged as an important barrier to access
to scientific articles in Europe. Over the last decades, subscription
prices of scholarly journals have increased well above inflation (+3.5% pa).[45]

Figure 2: Scholarly (scientific) journals v
total serials: % price increase 1990-2009[46]

The steady high annual price increase in the
subscription fees of scientific journals is caused by several factors:

–
The low level of competition: each individual
journal title publishes research findings in a specialised field, has a unique
branding and reputation, and a given Impact Factor (a traditional metric
indicator for scholarly journal quality, along with citation counts.)[47]
Publishers have a significant amount of discretion in setting prices,
especially for journals with an excellent reputation;

–
The annual growth in the number of scientific
articles (+3.5%). This increase is reflected both by a growing number of
journals and a higher number of articles per journal, in line with increasing
expenditure on research and the number of researchers worldwide;

–
Researchers demand and expect access to high
quality journals and/or journals with high Impact Factors (meaning that their articles
are cited more often than articles published in other journals); these journals
cannot be substituted by other journals and therefore demand is price
insensitive.

At the same time, libraries' budgets have
been under pressure, a pressure which is likely to increase significantly
because of the economic crisis. The 2010 US Study of Subscription Prices for
Scholarly Society Journals[48] flagged up a list of
universities that made significant institutional subscription cancellations in
2009, due to their inability to cope with current price increases. Similarly,
Research Libraries UK (RLUK), which represents thirty major institutions
(including Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics), informed two
major publishers that, unless they agree to a 15% reduction in prices, it would
not renew its "big deal" contracts with them in 2012.

Scientific publishers indicate, on the
other hand, that access to scientific articles has never been better, in
particular thanks to so-called "big deals", that is bundles of
journals that cost less than the sum of subscriptions to all the individual
journals in the bundle.[49] However, the big deals
do not necessarily reflect the needs of libraries who acquire content that they
do not need. Also libraries of less well-endowed academic institutions still
find it difficult to cope with the "big deal" prices. On top of it
they cannot adjust their expenditure because cancelling individual
subscriptions from the bundle will not lead to a reduced overall price under
the "big deal" agreement. Their budgets are 'locked' due to the
multiannual character of the 'big deal' agreements, making it difficult for new
publishers to enter the market. Finally,

The combination
of rising journal subscription prices and pressure on library budgets, risks
further limiting access by researchers to scientific journals. In
combination, these factors make it increasingly difficult for institutions to
acquire all the journals to which they want to have access. This is also
referred to as the "serial crisis".

One factor that
contributes to the gap between the prices of electronic journals and library
budgets is VAT. Under current EU VAT law, printed scientific
publications are subject to a reduced VAT rate, while VAT on the same content
delivered in electronic form is charged at the standard rate. 36% of
respondents to the on-line public consultation on scientific information mentioned
VAT as a factor hindering access to scientific content in Europe. The Communication
on the future of VAT[50] stipulates that "[s]imilar
goods and services should be subject to the same VAT rate and progress in
technology should be taken into account in this respect, so that the challenge
of convergence between the on-line and the physical environment is addressed."

2.2.1.2.  The
development of the open access movement

As a reaction
to rising journal prices and the resulting pressure on libraries, there have
been calls by the scientific community for a number of years for free, instant,
internet access to scientific research results (including peer-reviewed journal
articles). One of the main arguments of this 'open access movement' is that
publicly funded research should be made available to the general public for
free, as taxpayers have already contributed to the costs of its production.

Open access to scientific research results
has taken two forms: the so-called ‘Gold Open Access’ and ‘Green Open Access’
models. Under the 'Gold Open Access' model, the costs of publishing are covered
by authors rather than by reader subscriptions. In practice, funding bodies or
universities pay the publishing costs upfront.

In the 'Green Open Access' model, the
journal article – in a final or almost final version – is made available for
free on the internet, either on an individual webpage of the author or within
an institutional repository. Usually an embargo period is applied first, to
allow the scientific publisher to recoup their costs and make a return on their
investment.[51] The length of the
embargo period itself depends on a number of factors[52],
among them the length of time after which results are considered to be out of
date, a time span that varies among disciplines. One can consider this time
span to be shorter in the scientific, technological and medical fields and
longer in the fields of social sciences and the humanities. Some funders[53],
including the EU[54], have applied such a
distinction, whereas others set the default rule of a six month embargo period
and allow for exceptions[55].

In the on-line public consultation on
scientific information, 88% of the respondents supported the idea that publicly
funded research should be made available free of charge at some stage. All national and regional government and research funding
organisation respondents agreed or agreed strongly. Out of the other stakeholder
groups did also agree or agree strongly with the statement: 96% of libraries,
96% of citizens, 95% of universities/research institutes, 94% of individual
researchers and 76% of international organisations. Publishers are the only
group of stakeholders where a majority (67%) disagree or disagree strongly with
the idea that that publications resulting from publicly funded research should,
as a matter of principle, be in open access.

Self-archiving (Green OA), or a combination
of self-archiving and OA publishing (Gold OA), were identified as the preferred
ways of increasing the number and share of scientific publications available in
OA mode. The majority (56% of respondents) prefer an embargo period (the period
of time during which access to a publication is restricted) of six months.

Recent studies[56]
suggest that 20% of the academic and scientific literature published worldwide in
2008 is now be freely available on the Web, 60% as Green OA and 40% as Gold OA.[57]

Figure 3: Percentage of scientific articles
which are Open Access

Gold Open Access
journal publishing saw rapid growth between 2000 and 2009, measured both in
terms of total article output and number of OA journals.[58]
[59]
It is estimated that around 19,500 articles were published as OA in 2000, with
the number rising to 191,850 in 2009. Journal numbers show considerable growth,
though not as rapid as at the article-level, with an estimated 4,769 journals
published as OA in 2009, compared to 740 in 2000.[60]

Publishers like
BiomedCentral and Springer have already embarked on large-scale open access
publishing models and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck
Society and the Wellcome Trust have announced plans to launch a open access
journal in 2012 for biomedical and life sciences research. Elsevier reported to
be the largest OA publisher.[61] The huge success of PLoS
ONE, an open access journal published by the not-for-profit publisher Public
Library of Science (PLoS)[62], has led other major
publishers, Science, SAGE Publishing and/or the British Medical Journal to
embark on similar OA activities.

Figure 4: Growth of OA articles and journals[63]

One key finding of the SOAP survey[64] is the large gap between
support for open access publishing (around 90%) and actual open access
publishing (around 10%). The main reasons were found to be a lack of easily
accessible funding for open access publishing, as well as a lack of high
reputation open access journals. The latter is a key issue for researchers,
whose careers often depend on the number of times their articles are cited.
While OA journals are improving their reputation, gaining visibility is a
complex challenge. Some, such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals[65]
have impressive impact factors.

Recently, the debate around open access got
heated, with scientists calling to boycott one of the leading
commercial publishers by refusing to submit articles to their journals, or to
carry out peer reviews for them.[66]

There are concerns about the effects of
open access publishing under both the Green and Gold models.

On the one hand, publishers are afraid that
a widespread implementation of "Green OA"
mandates with too short embargo periods could lead librarians to cancel
subscriptions. According to the industry, this would endanger the existence of
individual journals and also potentially publishers themselves, in particular
those with a small business portfolio (including the learned societies).
Consequently, the overall impact on the existing scholarly dissemination system
would be negative.

On the other hand, there are questions
about the cost attached to a large-scale transition to "Gold OA", and
who would pay for it, bearing in mind that 1.5 million scientific articles are
published worldwide every year. Likewise, issue are raised about the
transitional phase during which articles would be published under the Gold
model as well as on a subscription basis. The concern is that subscription
prices would not be reduced in parallel with the rising income for publishers
from Gold Open Access publishing fees. Finally, there is the matter about keeping
article processing costs under control under any 'Gold OA' system.

Self-archiving is facing a legal obstacle
related to the current practice of copyright transfers by authors to publishers.
Publishers argue that they need the copyright transfer in order to have an
exclusive exploitation right ensuring that they will recoup their investment
made into the publication process. Under this scenario, authors can only
self-archive a version of their manuscript with the consent of the publisher,
putting the publisher in a strong position. It is argued[67]
that a system of non-exclusive licences should replace the current practice as
it would allow for a more flexible management of IPR rights, in particular
allowing for self-archiving along-side publication in a subscription-based
journal and the right to re-use the information contained in the article. In
any event a policy mandating self-archiving of articles after a defined embargo
period will have an impact on either the exercise of the economic aspects of
the copyright if transferred by the author or the extent to which an exclusive
licence can be granted to the publisher.

2.2.2.     Accessibility
of research data

Observations and data collected during the
research process underpin the results of published research. This raw data has
a value in itself. It can be used to verify the results of the experiments, for
further research in the same area, and it can also be combined with data from
other research to work towards new cross-disciplinary discoveries.

As underlined
in the Commission’s open data strategy,[68] scientific
activities are increasingly undertaken through online global collaborations,
using very large research data collections, huge computing resources and high
performance visualisation. E-Science (research enabled by
e-infrastructure/ICT) is essential for meeting the challenges of the 21st
century in scientific discovery and learning. The data come from simulations,
digital instruments, sensor nets, and observatories. The 2010 report ‘Riding
the Wave’[69] underlined the crucial
role of data for science, and its potential to change the very nature of the
scientific process itself.

In the on-line
public consultation, 86% of the respondents agreed on the development of an
EU network of repositories.

The shift in the scientific process brought
about by e-science will increase research productivity, and enable new and
unexpected solutions to emerge in response to social challenges.

Currently, research data
resulting from publicly funded research is not widely available for others to
build upon. Moreover, even if it is available
online, data is not necessarily presented in formats that facilitate its use
and re-use. The vast majority (87%) of respondents to the on-line public consultation
on scientific information disagreed, or strongly disagreed, with the statement
that 'there is no access problem to research data in Europe.' In addition,
there was strong support (89%) for public access to research data, and for the
results of publicly funded research to be, as a matter of principle, available for
re-use free of charge on the Internet. The main barriers to access to research
data were identified as: the lack of funding to develop and maintain the
necessary infrastructure (80%); insufficient credit given to researchers for
making research data available (80%); insufficient national/regional
strategies/policies (79%); and the lack of incentives for researchers (76.4%).

The EU-funded project PARSE-Insight[70]
(Permanent Access to the Records of Science in Europe) found that researchers
have difficulty in finding relevant data resources, and in re-using available
datasets. Reasons ranged from access being denied to a lack of data
manipulation skills or software. Only 25% of researchers state that they share
their research data openly. 11% make it available for researchers within their
research discipline, while 58% make it available within their specific research
group. These figures tend to support the UK Research Data Service (UKRDS)
survey,[71] which found that while
informal sharing is common amongst researchers, overall they wish to keep
control of their data.

This situation hinders the dissemination of
knowledge, and results in a loss of efficiency of research investment.

The following key factors limit access to
research data:

·
Costs

There are many different kinds and
categories of data generated at different stages of the research process.
Designating which datasets ought to be made publicly available is a complex
question. The costs in terms of effort and time needed to prepare data for
depositing are viewed as a burden by researchers. Unless depositing is mandated
by funders and research institutions, researchers have little incentive to make
their data accessible for re-use. Costs are exploding as the generation of data
(from scientific instruments or large scale simulations) rises exponentially,
raising significant problems for the sustainability of long-term preservation
for re-use.

·
Lack of explicit career rewards and/or
recognition for sharing data

The lack of explicit career rewards and/or
recognition for researchers for depositing and sharing research data was
highlighted in a UK RIN report as a major disincentive for granting OA to data.[72]
Researchers who share their data are motivated by altruism, encouragement from
peers, or hope of opening up opportunities for collaboration. However, most
researchers wish to retain exclusive use of the data they have created until
they have extracted all the publication value possible. When combined with the
perceived lack of career rewards for data sharing, this constitutes a major
constraint on making research data openly available. The insufficient credit
given to researchers who make research data available was reported by 80% of
the respondents to the on-line public consultation on scientific information,
indicating that this is a barrier to enabling wider access to research data in
Europe.

·
Lack of the necessary and interoperable
e-infrastructure

As the volume and diversity of scientific
data increase, and as research becomes more multi-disciplinary and researchers
struggle to connect and correlate data – especially if it comes from another academic
discipline - reliable infrastructures for Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs),
Digital Access Index (DAIs), AAA (Authentication, Authorization and
Accounting), and metadata interoperability are required. To improve scientific
efficiency and productivity, researchers will need a trusted system for
finding, accessing, using and re-using data. Although ICT infrastructures
(e-infrastructures) for data are now rapidly emerging in Europe and internationally,
they are not necessarily interoperable across countries and disciplines, or are
unsustainable due to lack of commonly agreed governance, legal frameworks and
funding models.

The fact that this is a relatively new field
suggests the possibility of pilot initiatives to uncover which rules and
infrastructures would address the problem of data access in a cost effective
way. Studies such as ODE (Opportunities for Data Exchange)[73]
are providing the evidence and context for setting European strategies in this
area.

The report 'Riding the wave'[74]
argues that the most efficient way to address both the objective of widespread
access to research, as well as its preservation for re-use, is to provide a
collaborative and federated information infrastructure. According to the
report, the essential attributes of this infrastructure would include
flexibility, reliability, security and openness. It should have a strong
European dimension and be well connected globally. It needs to achieve high
standards of performance with contained costs through extensive collaboration
of governments, funders, research organisations, companies and individuals. The
collaborative and federated model for e-infrastructures has been previously
implemented with success in the areas of research networks (GEANT), high
performance computing (PRACE) and grid computing (EGI.eu).

The preservation of the software created to
process, access, visualize and preserve scientific data should also be ensured.
Without this infrastructure and the possibility to adapt it to the changing
circumstances of the scientific data, the data itself would not be usable in
most cases.

In this area further work would be
undertaken regarding the interoperability of repositories, metadata and quality
issues and building for example on the works of OpenAIRE or the Alliance for
Permanent Access, enabling that the challenges related to preservation are
undertaken. Moreover, the development of institutional repositories and
implementation of institutional mandates would further expose results from
publicly-funded research to the use and re-use by other researchers and
potential commercial users.

·
Other obstacles

Other disincentives to sharing research
data include lack of time and resources, lack of experience and expertise in
data management and provision of good metadata, legal[75]
and ethical constraints, lack of an appropriate archive service, and fear of
exploitation or inappropriate use of the data.

2.2.3.     Preservation
of scientific content

The preservation of scientific content is
crucial in order to ensure permanent access to digital content over time.
However, despite a widespread recognition of the importance of long-term
preservation of scientific information the scientific community has limited
incentives to engage in this area.

In the on-line public consultation
on scientific information, 80% of the respondents indicated that the lack
of appropriate financing and organisational models put the long-term
preservation of patrimonial digital scientific material at risk: when critical
data – whether about climate, new medicines or historic monuments, are needed
later on, it might be too late.

2.2.3.1.  Preservation
of scientific journals

The PARSE-Insight
study[76] that looked into the
preservation of scientific content in Europe highlighted that the preservation
of scientific journals is reasonably well organised. The publishers themselves
often take care of preservation issues. Most scientific journals (93 %)
are subject to preservation measures or policies implemented by publishers.
However, there are also gaps: only 23% of small publishers report having a
dedicated preservation strategy. Some publishers (52%) have transferred
preservation responsibilities to a third party (for example, JSTOR, Portico, or
LOCKSS). Some alternative solutions are being implemented, notably through
national library services such as the e-Depot at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in
the Netherlands.

It should be noted that publishers are not
always in the best position to preserve scientific material in the public
interest, because the concept of "long term" in the world of science
is often longer than the life of most publishing companies. Traditionally, the
national ‘deposit libraries’ received one or more copies of all scientific
journals for preservation purposes. 69% of respondents to the on-line public
consultation on scientific information indicated that the obligation for
content producers to make one or more copies of scientific materials available
to a designated deposit body is a central issue for the preservation of digital
scientific publications.

Legal deposit legislation across the EU is
being adapted to the digital age, but scientific publications are not fully
covered, which may put the long-term preservation of these publications at
risk.

2.2.3.2.  Preservation
of scientific data

There are many
reasons to support the preservation and sharing of research data: it allows for
the re-analysis of existing data, enables greater cross-sector collaboration
and opportunities within education and training, and reduces the cost of
collection and duplication. Furthermore, in many scientific fields each dataset
is unique, costly and irreproducible; if the data is not preserved it is
lost for ever. In the area of earth sciences,[77]
for example, it is impossible to go back in time and resample environmental
data, given the variability of the state of the Earth and its environment over
time. Earth observations are of unique value in understanding climate change
and natural hazards, and in developing an appropriate response to global and
regional climate change and related threats.

However, very few research
funding organisations, research infrastructures and universities undertake
proper research data preservation activities. Results from a study that
looked into the current state of affairs in Europe show that individual
researchers are generally unaware of the need to preserve data for the long
term, nor of the best ways to do so. According to the PARSE-Insight study, only
20% of researchers submit data to a digital archive. 40% of researchers
report that they store between 1 Gigabyte and 1 Terabyte of data,
whilst 11% reported that they were unaware of how much information they stored.
Some preserved their research data on a PC at work or on the server of the
institution they belong to (59%), or, in many cases, on a personal computer at
home (51%).

The key question of who should be
responsible for long-term preservation and its funding remains unresolved.
Moreover, different academic communities have different approaches, and their
preservation strategies are at different stages of development. There is a
consensus that each particular research field should develop partnerships with
data scientists or informatics specialists with domain expertise to ensure
effective curation, and preparation for deposit, of articles. However, this
does not solve the problem of the funding and overall responsibility for the
preservation of scientific content.

2.3.        Stakeholder
analysis: who is affected and how?

Limited access to research publications and
raw data, and the lack of preservation of both publications and data,
negatively impact on a number of stakeholders.

2.3.1.     Researchers

Their research generates data. They write
articles and review those of their peers. They value the importance of making
their work widely available and better preserving the research data they make
accessible, but are not always aware of the importance of their role. However,
access to scientific publications remains a problem for 4 out of 5 researchers,[78]
while access to underlying research data is a problem for almost 90% of
them.[79] Likewise, the lack of
appropriate preservation of scientific publications and data negatively
impacts the work and careers of researchers. Open access publishing increases
the visibility of researchers' publications and therefore their research
impact.[80]

2.3.2.     Businesses,
including SMEs

SMEs do not usually have in-house research
labs/departments. They
therefore rely on access to scientific literature in order to be able to
innovate. The present lack of open access to scientific publications
impacts negatively on the capacity of SMEs to innovate. As described above,[81]
it may take SMEs 2.2 years longer to develop/launch a product to the market
without open access to scientific publications.

2.3.3.     Scientific
publishers

Publishers are, in general, comfortable
with the status quo. The market is characterised by a large amount of
traditional journal publishers. Many publish journals on behalf of learned
societies who seek revenue from subscriptions to fund activities such as
academic conferences. Most commercial publishers today offer some kind of open
access publishing option under the Gold OA model, and allow for some sort of
self archiving. There is also an increasing number of publishers who
exclusively publish open access journals.

2.3.4.     Governments
(national/ sub-state level)

The cost of acquisition of academic
literature by academic libraries is a matter of concern for governments, since
they are one of the principal sources of research funding, and the most
important funders for higher academic institutions. A move towards open access
publishing could lower overall costs for Governments when purchasing scientific
content, as well as maximising their social and economic returns in terms of
increased visibility for research and wider access to scientific output. The
lack of appropriate preservation policies leads to a loss of scientific and
cultural heritage. Research may need to be funded twice when past results are
no longer accessible.

2.3.5.     Academic
institutions (including their libraries)

Academic libraries struggle with rising
subscription prices. The budgets for acquisition of academic literature by
academic libraries have been strained over the years by a growth of
subscription prices well beyond inflation.[82] Sometimes a
rise of subscription prices in the area of science, technical and medical
publishing is covered at the expense of publication subscriptions in the field
of arts and humanities. The current absence of policies favouring open access
publishing negatively impacts on library budgets, and on the amount of content
they can purchase. The absence of open access publishing can also negatively
impact on the global visibility and reputation of academic institutions, and
potentially hinder their ability to attract funding, new faculty members and potential
students.

2.3.6.     Citizens

Citizens and individual professionals, such
as doctors and pharmacists, need easy access to scientific research results,
without the need to be affiliated to an academic library. The current absence
of easy and open access negatively impacts on their capacity to benefit from up
to date knowledge in their daily practice.

2.4.        The
EU dimension

2.4.1.     Treaty
Base

The right of the EU to act in this field is
set out in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and in the Treaty on the
functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Firstly, the promotion of scientific
and technological advance in its own right became a specific objective of the
Union for the first time, with Article 3(3) TEU. In addition, Article 179(1),
(2) of the TFEU references the ERA as the way to strengthen the scientific and
technological bases of the Union, whereby scientific knowledge is mentioned as
a key characteristic of the ERA. Finally, Article 182(5) TFEU provides a legal
basis for taking the measures necessary for the implementation of the ERA. The
European added value lies in maximising the social and economic value of
Europe’s investments in Research and Development.

2.4.2.     Subsidiarity
test

In order for Union
action to be justified, the subsidiarity and proportionality principles need to
be respected.

Action in this
area at European level is necessary to avoid further fragmentation across the
EU and to take into account the cross-border nature of the scientific
dissemination process. In all Member States initiatives exist to facilitate and
enable wider access to and preservation of scientific information, but the
intensity and focus of effort vary. Multiple initiatives have confronted
European researchers, research funding bodies and citizens with overlapping
policies and e-infrastructure development progressing at different speed. As shown
by the baseline scenario outlined below, there is a serious risk of current
fragmentation persisting or getting worse.

The aim of the initiative
is to narrow the gaps between policy and practice in Member States, and thereby
contribute to the fifth freedom and the development of the ERA. Moreover, it
will stimulate the creation of EU-wide products and services based on scientific
information (e.g. e-science).

Political,
legislative and strategic interaction at European level is required in order to
offer Member States and stakeholders a supportive framework to seize the
opportunity of wider access to scientific information. This requires the type
of co-ordination that can only be facilitated at the European level with input
from all stakeholder groups, and which cannot be achieved by Member States
alone.

In terms of the
proportionality of EU action, the proposal would need to provide Member States
with sufficient room to determine the specific conditions for pursuing and
implementing policies to improve the access to, and preservation of, scientific
information. It should also take into account the varying needs between
scientific disciplines, universities and research funding organisations, as
well as the different stage of development of the relevant policies and
practices in Member States.

2.5.        Baseline
scenario

The baseline scenario would propose no
policy change and would largely maintain the current policy approach to access
to, and preservation of, scientific information in Europe. The access to, and
preservation of, scientific output would continue to build on existing legal
frameworks at Member State or European level, and policies would continue to
largely depend on varying national initiatives.

2.5.1.     Fragmentation
of national OA policies

As reported in the National Open Access and
Preservation Policies in Europe Report,[83] Member States
are putting strategies in place regarding access and dissemination. Eight
reported implementing a national policy, and five reported action at a regional
level. The approaches vary widely. This makes it difficult to move in an
orderly way to a more open dissemination model for scientific information
across the EU that would benefit all stakeholders.

For example, Denmark adopted
recommendations as to how to implement the 2007 Council Conclusions on
Scientific Information at a national level, and Sweden has a national open
access programme. In contrast Germany has chosen to develop strategies at a
stakeholder level, Estonia adopted a Research Infrastructure Roadmap and
Ireland has put in place a network of institutional repositories and a
"national harvester". From the legislative point of view, only eight
Member States have adopted laws or legal provisions encouraging or mandating open
access – the UK has very recently announced that publicly funded research
should be open access[84]. 17 Member States have funding
bodies that implement open access policies. The Austria Science Fund has
developed an OA policy for all the research programmes they fund, s has the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The number of Member States where
universities implement open access has risen to 22, as of 2009. In the Netherlands,
all universities have some sort of OA policy.

2.5.2.     Divergence
regarding developing the e-infrastructure for open access

Considerable differences also exist in
the development of e-infrastructures, both from an
organisational and technical point of view.

The University of Finland, for example,
provides a centralised repository for the benefit of all Finnish Universities.
Ireland's approach has been to set up a central register to harvest the content
of the different institutional repositories. In order to ensure repository
quality, Germany and Spain have developed quality certification services to
ensure a minimum quality regarding operation, collection, development for
compliant repositories. Other Member States have no such certification measures.

The EU funded project OpenAIRE (based on
the former DRIVER project) implements a network of institutional repositories
with common European standards, which many institutions are applying.[85]
Some Member States, such as Germany, the UK, Finland and France, are aiming to
interconnect their repository infrastructure so that a large digital library
for scientist and researchers can be established.

Figure 5: OpenAIRE currently links 72
repositories in 27 Member States.

2.5.3.     Fragmentation
regarding research data

The picture is also fragmented with regard
to access to research data. Currently, not all Member States have explicit
policies and/or arrangements for research data, but there are bodies that
encourage making research data widely available and accessible. Germany, for
example, has set up a research data centre to facilitate research data access.
Slovenia has emphasised the need for free access to research data, and the UK
research councils are developing a set of principles on the subject.

It seems that research data practices are
implemented in the EU only in very specific research domains varying by Member
State. At the federal level in Belgium, for example, the focus is on meteorological
data, while at regional level it is on marine and coastal research data. Social
research data is of interest in Austria, Finland, Slovenia and the UK. The
policies for the data deposit process and conditions for access that are being
implemented are very different across research disciplines, institutions and Member
States.

There is a real risk that infrastructures
for access and management of research data develop uncoordinated in Member
States, hampering scientific progress. Therefore, action is required at
European level to promote interoperability. In contrast to individual Member
States, the EU can play the important role of coordinating existing (or future)
national policies on data access, preservation and management, through a
combination of policy measures and operational activities.

2.5.4.     Lack
of preservation policies in EU

The approaches of Member States to
preserving scientific content also vary considerably. Most have updated, or are
updating, their legal deposit legislation to take into account the requirements
of the digital age, but the material covered varies. For example, the UK is currently
consulting on whether the legal deposit system could be extended to cover born-digital
media, such as e-journals. As for the long-term preservation of research data,
policies are sketchy and often lack the operational and organisational
implementation structures needed.

2.6.        Conclusion
on the baseline scenario

Member States are working to improve the
access to, and preservation of, scientific information, but not necessarily at
the same speed. The priorities and focus of Member States differ widely, and national
policies could easily remain isolated. In this baseline scenario, it would be
up to individual institutions or Member States to share good practice with
other research communities and institutions. No benefit would be drawn from the
scale of the internal information market.

In this scenario, the potential benefits of
wider access to research publications, estimated at 1.8 billion EUR a year for
the EU27 (see section 2.1), would not or only be very partially realised.

3.           Objectives

3.1.        General
policy objectives and more specific/operational objectives

Free, wider and easier access to scientific
information generated through public funding would allow the benefits of
science to be exploited by researchers, industries and citizens in scientific endeavour,
business innovation and whatever unexpected re-use they may think of. The general
objective of EU action in this field is to provide stronger support to
innovation and contribute to economic growth by improving the conditions for
the access to and re-use of scientific information and enabling the development
of the ERA. This general objective is fully in line with the horizontal EU
level strategies, in particular the 2010 Communication from the Commission
Europe 2020.

Specific objectives include:

(1)
Scientific publications become openly accessible
online for free, as far as possible and as soon as possible;

(2)
Research data is made openly accessible online,
for free;

(3)
Scientific information (publications and data)
is preserved for future generations;

(4)
Access to scientific information (publications
and data) across Member States is facilitated.

The implementation of better policies on
access to, and preservation of, scientific information, requires the timely
establishment of Europe-wide partnerships. In this context, the operational
objectives of this proposal are:

In relation to the specific objective
(1):

Stimulate the implementation of open access
policies for scientific publications by 2014 that:

–
increase the number of publications resulting
from public funding available in open access to 60% by 2016;

–
increase the number of open access mandates;

–
improve the funding conditions for Gold open
access.

In relation to the specific objective
(2):

Stimulate the implementation of open access
policies for data that:

–
require the deposit of research data resulting
from public funding in an e-infrastructure;

–
support the set-up and the maintenance of
digital e-infrastructures

In
relation to specific objective (3):

–
Support the set-up and the maintenance of
digital e-infrastructures for preservation

–
Promote effective deposit systems for
digitally-born scientific information

In relation to specific objective (4):

–
Ensure full interoperability between
e-infrastructures across and outside the EU;

–
Promote federated access to scientific content;

–
Promote co-ordination of policies and exchange
of good practices and stakeholder dialogue at European level.

This proposal will not deal with the issues
of differences in VAT rates for print and electronic versions of the same
publication. Although this presents a problem,[86] the proposed
policy action will not address it. The discussion on reduced VAT rates needs to
be addressed in the more comprehensive, ongoing context of VAT reform rather
than singling out the case of scientific publications.[87]

3.2.        Related
policies

EU policy in the area of scientific
information aims at developing the widest possible accessibility and
availability of scientific output for both use and re-use by European
researchers and interested parties, in particular innovative industries. Policy
objectives in the area of scientific information are consistent with the
following horizontal EU objectives:

3.2.1.     EU
growth strategy Europe 2020 and its flagship initiatives

The initiative contributes to, and is fully
aligned with, the EU’s growth strategy and, in particular, with two of its
flagship initiatives: the Digital Agenda for Europe and the Innovation Union.

One of the objectives mentioned in the 2010
Communication of the Commission on the Flagship Initiative Innovation Union is
to promote openness and capitalise on Europe's creative potential. Speeding up
research and innovation through better access to scientific information
contributes to this aim. Companies innovate in various ways; while some conduct
R&D and develop new technologies, others base their innovation on existing
technologies. Policies must be designed to support all forms of innovation. The
Communication announces that the Commission will promote open access to the
results of publicly funded research and in particular make open access to
publications the "general principle" for projects funded by the EU
research Framework Programmes. Increasing the accessibility of research outputs
emanating from publicly funded research is also instrumental in enhancing the
overall transparency and accountability of national institutions vis-à-vis
their tax payers.

3.2.2.     EU
policy in the area of open data

The Commission has been at the forefront of
open data development through a series of initiatives, in particular the
Directive on the re-use of public sector information (Directive 2003/98/EC).
The goals of the Commission's open data strategy are to stimulate the public
sector across the EU to embrace the principles of open data, increase
transparency and administrative efficiency by releasing public data for re-use,
and create optimal conditions for innovation and business development based on
re-use. On 12 December 2011 the Commission adopted an Open Data strategy.[88]
The underlying philosophy of this Communication is that citizens and the
society as a whole will benefit from a more open flow of a variety of
information. One element of the strategy is a revision of the 2003 Directive. According to the proposal, research and educational establishments
remain outside the scope of application of the Directive, in view of the
relatively complicated situation as regards third party rights (intellectual
property rights not owned by the research institution, but for example by a
university professor). In this context the principle that public sector
information should be available for free or, at most, at the marginal cost of
dissemination, is fully in line with the principle of open access.

3.2.3.     Horizon
2020 and the European Research Area (ERA) framework

As described in detail in Section 1 and 2,
the area of access to, and preservation of, scientific information is
intimately linked to European research and innovation policy. OA policies also
apply to research funded at EU-level. Following on from the Communication on
the Flagship Initiative Innovation Union, the proposed Horizon 2020 implementation
rules[89] specify that
"[w]ith regard to dissemination through research publications, open access
shall apply under the terms and conditions laid down in the grant agreement.
With regard to dissemination of other results, including research data, the
grant agreement may lay down the terms and conditions under which open access
to such results must be provided, in particular in ERC frontier research or any
other appropriate areas." In addition, in late 2007, the European Research
Council (ERC) adopted an OA mandate requiring that all peer-reviewed
publications emanating from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on
publication into an institutional repository, and made available via open access
within six months of publication.[90] The Commission is also
supporting open access in the ERA framework. A Communication on "A
Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth"[91]
will set out five key priorities for the completion of the ERA, among them open
access.

3.2.4.     The
Commission's policy regarding open access in the programmes for research and
innovation

The Commission
will implement an open access policy intended to contribute to improving the
access to EU-funded scientific research. As an important research funding body,
the Commission is setting an example through the implementation of the
forthcoming Horizon 2020 programme. The Commission will require that there be open
access to all scientific publications emanating from EU-funded research. The
specific details on the implementation of this open access policy will be
spelled out in the Rules of Participation of the programme. It will build upon
the experience of 7th Framework programme for research and development ( FP7
budget) pilot open access exercise launched in 2008 which covered about 20% of
the FP7 budget. In this pilot exercise researchers were required to deposit
their research publications after an agreed embargo period (6-12 months). In
addition the Commission Framework programme also allows for the "Gold Open
Access" route. Gold open access fees are considered as eligible cost in EU
grants.

3.2.5.     The
Commission's journal publication scheme

With specific regard to the wealth of
scientific information produced by Joint Research Centre (JRC) and with an aim
to structure and harmonise the publication of works authored by the staff of
the Commission in peer-reviewed journals, the Commission is negotiating the
adoption of a one-off framework agreement establishing uniform terms and
conditions with several publishers. This publication scheme, EC PLUG, will
allow EU-Euratom to retain all its rights with respect to works authored or
co-authored by EC staff, and establish an embargo period before they can be
reproduced or distributed more widely.

3.3.        The
international framework

Major nations in research and development
are increasingly implementing OA mandates, investing in open access and
supporting research infrastructures. Currently, there are more than 200 OA
mandates worldwide.[92] For example in the US 44
OA mandates are being implemented. Most notably, the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the biggest funder of medical research in the world, has a
12-month embargo period OA mandate. PubMedCentral (PMC), which hosts NIH
research papers, is the world’s largest open access repository, holding over 3
million items The Canadian Institute of Health, the Australian Research Council
and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to name just a few, also implement OA
policies. Universities such as Harvard, Yale and MIT are also moving to open
access. The arXiv repository, managed by the University of Cornell, provides
open access to 731,853 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science,
Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.[93]

In the US, the mandating
policy of the NIH has led to a political debate, giving rise to the
introduction of two bills in US Congress, in 2006 and 2009, aiming at either
restricting or encouraging the mandating policy of the NIH.[94]
The most recent bill, the 'Research Works Act,' was particularly controversial.
It was designed to prohibit the open access funding mandates by federal
research funding agencies, and triggered vociferous reaction in the scientific
community.[95] It was withdrawn in
February 2012.[96] Currently, work is being
undertaken by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), part of the
Executive Office of the US President, to advance the debate on open access.[97]

OA policies are also being set up in
developing countries and emerging markets, with the objective of increasing the
international visibility of their research, and of facilitating scientific
exchange.[98]

Figure 6: Proportion of Repositories by
Continent - Worldwide[99]

At the international level, UNESCO and the
OECD are active in promoting better access to scientific information. UNESCO
has recently updated its Open Access strategy.[100]
It centres around three strands:

(1)
Provision of upstream policy advice and building
partnerships;

(2)
Strengthening capacities to adopt OA;

(3)
Serve as a clearing-house and inform the global
OA debate.

On the last item, UNESCO provides
comprehensive country reports on the development of OA policies around the
world. The strategy is mainly focused on exchange of best practice.

The OECD Declaration
on Access to Research Data from Public Funding was adopted by the 30 OECD
countries and China, Israel, Russia and South Africa.[101]
It sets out 13 principles that should govern access to research data, which
ought to be implemented by the signatories.

4.           Policy
options

This section examines a range of options
for addressing the problems highlighted in previous sections. For the purposes
of this IA, the options discussed will be the following:

(1)
Discontinuing existing EU action

(2)
No policy change (Baseline scenario)

(3)
Providing a policy framework to MS in the form of
soft law

(4)
Approximation of MS legislation

4.1.        Discontinuing
existing EU action

This option would result in the removal of
all the soft measures, including any implementing measure, currently contained
in the Council Conclusions on Scientific Information.[102]
Certain Member States, mostly the more research-intensive ones, would continue
to promote open access policies and reap the benefits. A certain degree of
exchange of best practice may occur, but this is likely to happen in a
haphazard way without any structured exchange. Long-term preservation of
scientific information will continue to happen occasionally and in a
non-systematic manner. The EU would not address problems and would no longer
support the process through its multiple roles, funding or co-funding of
infrastructures and projects (FP7 Capacities and CIP) and policy making. All
action in the development of research infrastructures aimed at achieving a
lasting EU-level infrastructure, as well as all associated actions to support
researchers, research funding organisations and scientific communities, would
be discontinued. Moreover, the particular role of the Commission and European
institutions in relation to different stakeholders would be abandoned.

4.2.        No
policy change (Baseline scenario)

This option, which would maintain the current
approach, has been described in detail in section 2.5. Within this baseline
scenario, it is possible to continue the work within the "ERAC Working
Group on Knowledge Transfer" in conducting peer learning activities and
exchange of good practices, reinforcing the process of policy learning and
thereby increasing the effectiveness of measures taken. Elements of
evidence-based, comprehensive and consistent policies can be presented by the
Commission and discussed with, and by, Member States, but there would be no
formal commitment on their part to such an approach as a basis for future
policy development. Funding with the CIP, Science and Society/ Responsible
Research and Innovation and the Capacities Programme and Future Horizon 2020
could prioritise effective measures to improve access to scientific information
in Europe, and elements of evidence based, comprehensive and consistent
policies could provide guidance to Member States on how to improve their
initiatives.

Market and regulatory developments will continue
to take place irrespectively of a change in the policy. The number of OA
journals and OA content will continue to grow modestly. Traditional publishers
will continue to offer hybrid OA alternatives, experiment with different OA
business models, and innovate on approaches in order to reduce costs.[103]
Many countries and international fora (see section 3.3) consider OA as reliable
way to increase access to scientific information, and will continue to pursue
this avenue.

The OpenAire infrastructure will be further
developed into OpenAirePlus, adding a feature to integrate research data and
link publications to data.

However, disparities are likely to become
stronger between larger and/or more research-intensive MS and others. Long-term
preservation of scientific information will continue to happen occasionally and
in a non-systematic manner.

The alignment of the VAT rates for
electronic and on-paper publications will be addressed in a separate process.
The Communication on the future of the VAT[104] announces a
specific revision process on the structure of VAT rates with a proposal
expected for the end of 2013.

4.3.        Providing
a policy framework to MS in the form of soft law

Under this
option, a policy framework would be provided to Member States in order to help
them develop and implement policies on access to, and preservation of,
scientific information (scientific articles and research data). The framework
would take a holistic approach in order to substantially improve the access to
scientific information in Europe, whether it results from public or private
funding.

It would set
the general policy objective of widening access to both publications and
research data, leaving it to relevant actors in MS to decide which particular
open access policy best meets their needs. The policy framework would require
the relevant actors in the MS to set up open access mandates requiring all
publications and data resulting from publicly-funded research (in whole or in
part) to be openly accessible and ensure compliance. Should MS opt to apply the
'Green OA' model, however, certain limitations would apply in terms of the
embargo periods to be applied to self-archiving of publications: An embargo
period of six months would apply in all fields except the social sciences and humanities
where a twelve-month period would apply. The difference in treatment is
justified by the longer half-life of research results in social sciences and
humanities. Green open access requires the existence of digital
e-infrastructures, i.e. online repositories for self-archiving of articles by
authors. The policy framework would require the creation, funding and maintenance
of such e-infrastructures, as well as the setting of quality standards, if they
do not exist already[105]. It should not
necessarily require the creation of such e-infrastructures in each MS. MS may
want to cooperate on this. In order to ensure compliance with the open access
mandates, academic institutions and research funding organisations would be
required to reward scientists by taking compliance into account for career
evaluations and for the award of research grants.

Scientists
will be required to exercise their intellectual property rights in a way
compliant with the OA mandates by replacing the current practice of assigning
the economic aspects of the copyright to publishers with a system of licences.
The length of an exclusive licence to be granted under the Green OA model is
clearly linked to the length of the embargo periods as the licence is the legal
reflection of agreed embargo period. This aspect of the policy framework leaves
the current legislative framework on IPR intact while limiting their
contractual freedom to assign their copyright to publishers.

The policy
framework is sufficiently flexible to be able to accommodate new technological
developments, and allows for the establishment of new modes of cooperation
among scientists offered by Web 2.0.[106]

It provides
for the adoption of comprehensive policies in the area of preservation, and the
development of e-infrastructure in the Member States within their research communities.

The policy
framework will provide for a monitoring mechanism based on regular reporting
obligations. These reporting obligations will include reporting on quantifiable
indicators such as the number of open access mandates adopted and the
compliance rates with those mandates, as well as the situation of digital
e-infrastructures and their technical standards.[107]

The proposed
policy framework is based on current experience with efforts to widen access to
scientific information in some Member States.[108]
It can be adapted to the specific situation in Member States, be it at national
or regional level, or at the level of universities/funding bodies.

This
framework can also serve as the basis of, and as an agenda for, future
cooperation between Member States. It will steer future policy developments at
EU level and guide the effective and efficient use of EU funding. Its added
value is based in laying the foundations for further work within Member States
and, at EU level, in guiding effective cooperation between Member States and
providing a good starting point for effective and efficient policies to improve
access to, and preservation of, scientific information in Europe.

A Communication and a Recommendation to the
Member States adopted by the Commission would describe the intended policy
framework. The Recommendation would specify the key features of the policy, although
in a non binding manner and providing flexibility for MS for its
implementation. Their effect can be improved by targeting funding opportunities
better, and by measuring them against their contribution to improving access to,
and preservation of, scientific information in Europe. Obligations on regular
reporting would allow the Commission to monitor uptake by Member States and to
give additional guidance where necessary and appropriate.

4.4.        Approximation
of MS legislation

Under this option, the Commission would
reinforce EU intervention in this field by adopting a Directive. Article 182(5)
of the TFEU provides a legal basis for taking the measures necessary for the
implementation of the ERA, including the adoption of a Directive.

The proposed policy framework (as explained
under 4.3.) would be implemented by a Directive requiring an approximation of
laws relating to access to, and preservation of, scientific information.

5.           Assessment
of the options

For the
purposes of this IA, the analysis is limited to a general assessment of the
possible options aimed at approximating and reinforcing national access and
preservation policies. Policy options have been identified on the basis of both
actions (access to scientific publications and research data, and their
preservation) and the nature of the measures proposed (whether legally binding
or not). The latter is relevant in this context, given that the legal nature of
the measures proposed is likely to have a significant impact on the degree to
which the objectives of improving access, ensuring preservation and enabling
synergies, can be better achieved. The analysis also takes into account the effect
on other stakeholders, and issues relating to proportionality, subsidiary and
rights.

Options are
compared with regard to their effectiveness (the extent to which options
achieve the objectives of the proposal) and efficiency (the extent to which
objectives can be achieved for a given level of resources/at the lowest cost).

This section presents the qualitative and,
where possible in this field, quantitative assessment of the impact of each of
the four policy options in the light of the problems and opportunities from
section 2, and the policy objectives identified in Section 3. The main areas of
potential impact are economic and social. Any policy in this area must ensure
that there is a level playing field and that a disproportionate burden is not
imposed on stakeholders. More information on the expected effects and potential
impacts can be found in the Annexes.

5.1.        Discontinuing
existing EU action

This option would result in the removal of
all the soft obligations currently contained in the Council Conclusions on
scientific information in the digital age, including any implementing measures.

5.1.1.     Impacts
related to access, re-use and preservation of scientific information

European researchers would have to rely
solely on the commitment and resources of their Member States, and on the
market, to provide solutions for wider access to, and preservation of, the
results of publicly funded research. This would create imbalances between
Member States and their scientific communities, given the different speeds and
different approaches currently in place. Consequently, the conditions for wider
access to scientific information in Europe would diminish. This complexity
would have detrimental repercussions on the free movement of scientific
information and scientists across the EU.

5.1.2.     Economic
impact

A discontinuation of EU action would lead
to increased problems in the circulation of scientific knowledge. This would
hamper the innovation capacity of European industry and have consequences for
the development of the European scientific knowledge base. A discontinuation of
the policy would increase the risk of uncertainty (as Member States would each
go their own way). In this scenario, scientific publishers would have fewer
incentives to innovate and adapt their current business models, experiment with
new paradigms, and seek alternative sources of revenue.

In the long run, this option would lead to
wider fragmentation of the internal market and, probably, an unnecessary
multiplication of efforts and costs at all levels. The potential benefits of
wider access to scientific information identified in section 1 would not
materialise.

5.1.3.     Impact
on stakeholders

5.1.3.1.  Impact
on researchers

Given the ‘serials-crisis’ described in
section 2, access to information across Europe would be likely to deteriorate.
The ability of researchers to access scientific information would depend on the
financial strength of the institution they work for, or of the Member States
where they live.

5.1.3.2.  Impact
on academic libraries

Libraries would be faced with prohibitive
price increases in their journal subscriptions, leading to a high rate of
subscription cancellation. This would have a knock-on effect on journals/
monographs in the humanities, since these are normally the first to be dropped
by librarians in order to accommodate STM content within reduced budgets. Given
a lack of European intervention, the opportunity for economies of scale for
purchasing content, or to address libraries' concerns about undertaking
preservation responsibilities, would be limited.

5.1.3.3.  Impact
on scientific publishers

Under this option, traditional publishers
would continue to pursue business as usual and would not be forced to adapt to
the current "open access" environment and to begin the transition
process towards new business models and areas of added-value. This option would
have a negative impact on the emerging set of open access publishers, who have
embraced the concept and are successfully pursuing open access publishing.

5.1.4.     Financial
impact

This option would have a negative impact on
governments/public sector budgets and/or impact negatively on the value for money
ratio of public investment in scientific information. Journal prices would
continue to increase and economies of scale would not be attained.

5.1.5.     Social
& environmental impacts

Insufficient circulation of scientific
knowledge will hamper the innovation capacity of European industry, as well as
the capacity of our researchers to address social challenges. This will, in
turn, have negative social and environmental consequences. Wide access to
research data in relevant areas could also contribute considerably to better
policy making.

5.2.        No
policy change (baseline scenario)

Under this option, no specific incentive would
be given by the EU, meaning that co-ordination among Member States and research
funding organisations would not be formally supported at a European level.
Co-ordination among national initiatives (in order to avoid redundancy and to
enhance European synergies) would rely upon informal, transnational or
international networks, rather than European ones. Initiatives demonstrating
significant European added value would continue to be funded under the general
framework of EU programmes, without being given specific priority.

5.2.1.     Impacts
related to access, re-use and preservation of scientific information

There is a significant risk that, in the
short term, the baseline scenario would discourage some Member States from
moving forward with open access, and that it would result in them adopting a
"wait and see" approach. As developments at national or regional
level are based upon a variety of considerations and criteria, European
researchers would have to continue to cope with uncertainty and
unpredictability in their working environment. Under this option, current
access to, and preservation of, scientific information would remain unchanged,
as described previously. European researchers would have to rely solely on the
commitment and resources of their Member States, and on the market, to provide
solutions for wider access to and preservation of the results of publicly
funded research. This would create imbalances between Member States and their
scientific communities, given their different speeds and different approaches
in this field. Consequently, the conditions fostering wider access to
scientific information Europe would diminish.

5.2.2.     Economic
impact

In this scenario, the current problems in
the circulation of scientific knowledge would continue to exist, and probably
be exacerbated by the effects of the economic crisis. This would hamper the
innovation capacity of European industry and have consequences for the
development of the European scientific knowledge base.

An additional risk of the baseline scenario
is that of increased fragmentation of the internal market as researchers face increasingly
divergent national regimes.

The consequence in terms of loss of
consumer welfare and the economy-at-large due to missed opportunities arising
from wider access to, and re-use of, publicly funded scientific research
publications, can been estimated at up to €1.8 billion.[109]

5.2.3.     Impact
on stakeholders:

5.2.3.1.  Impact
on researchers

Given the ‘serials-crisis’ described in
section 2, access to information across Europe would be likely to deteriorate
considerably. The ability of researchers to access scientific information would
depend on the financial strength of their employer and Member State.

5.2.3.2.  Impact
on academic libraries

Libraries would find themselves unable to
cope with price rises to their journal subscriptions, leading to subscription
cancellations. This would have a knock-on effect on journals/ monographs in the
humanities, since these are normally the first to be dropped by librarians in
order to accommodate STM content within reduced budgets.

5.2.3.3.  Impact
on scientific publishers

Under this option traditional publishers
would continue to pursue business as usual and would not need to adapt quickly
to the current environment, and speed up the transition process. This option
would have a negative impact on the emerging set of open access publishers who
have embraced the concept and are successfully pursuing open access publishing.

5.2.4.     Financial
impact

The financial impact of the baseline
scenario would be neutral in the short term, but in the medium term it would
lead to a suboptimal value for money ratio of public investment in access to
scientific information.

5.2.5.     Social
& environmental impacts

Insufficient circulation of scientific
knowledge will hamper the innovation capacity of European industry, as well as
the capacity of our researchers to address societal challenges. This will have
negative societal and environmental consequences. Wide access to research data
in relevant areas can also considerably contribute to better policy making..

5.3.        Implementation
of a policy framework by a Recommendation to Member States

Improving access to scientific publications has been the focus of
the debate on improving access to scientific information. It also has triggered
controversy. A considerable number of scientists feel
uneasy about the contrast between flat or shrinking library budgets on the one
hand, and the impressive profit margins of big players in the scientific
publishing industry on the other. Publishers for their
part feel that their business model is under pressure depending on the form of
open access applied to publications. Access to research data and preservation
of both publications of data on the other hand, are largely uncontroversial
subjects.

5.3.1.     Implementation
in relation to scientific publications

5.3.1.1.  General
impact: Better access to scientific publications and wider economic benefits

The proposed policy framework would lead to
better access to scientific information regardless what model – Green or Gold
OA – will be applied.

A 2010 study[110]
showed that roughly 20% of peer-reviewed articles published in 2008 were
openly accessible for free. Simulations suggest that,
with the implementation of Gold OA, there would be a considerable uptake of OA
publishing.[111] This is particularly
important for researchers affiliated to less well-endowed institutions.

In addition, another study demonstrates
that a self-archiving mandate would likely increase the percentage of papers
made OA.[112]

Open access to research results could have
a considerable economic impact.

Research[113]
has been undertaken to estimate the economic benefits derived from open access
to research publications. The potential economic impacts can be estimated in
detail using a modified Solow-Swan model.[114] Based on
conservative assumptions made by the authors, the model suggests that, assuming
a 20% return on R&D, a 5% increase in accessibility and efficiency due to
open access policies would result in annual gains of EUR 4.8 billion for Gross
Domestic Expenditures on R&D, and EUR 1.8 billion for government
and higher education expenditures on R&D for the EU27.[115]
This suggests that permanent increases in accessibility and efficiency due to
open access publishing can be converted to recurrent growth rates. The author's
of the report have had to respond to criticisms of their research methodology.[116]

5.3.1.2.  Specific
impacts on stakeholders

The policy framework sets a number of
objectives, but allows freedom in terms of implementation at national level.
Currently, two main models of OA provision are being implemented,[117]
and any future open access policy in MS is likely to consist of a combination
of both of them. MS are particularly likely to mix elements of Green and Gold
OA in order to respond to the specificities of different academic disciplines.
The policy framework also aims to allow for the development of future
alternative OA models.[118]

The impacts of the combination of elements
from the Green and the Gold OA models can be described along a continuum – with
exclusively Green OA, and exclusively Gold OA at either end:

Ideally the policy framework examines the
impacts on stakeholders carefully at each step of the implementation of the
policy framework, mainly the publishers.

Any analysis of the potential impacts of
the implementation of a mixture of the two models needs to examine the impacts
of the two extreme cases:

–
Main implementation of the policy framework by
applying Gold OA

–
Main implementation of the policy framework by
applying Green OA.

Main implementation of the policy
framework by applying Gold OA

Gold OA is the model in which the costs of
publishing are covered by authors (in practice, usually by the funding bodies
supporting them) or other sources (e.g. sponsorship), rather than by
subscription-paying readers. This type of publishing is also referred to as the
'author pays' model.

International context

In this sense, one could argue that
governmental investment in OA in the EU would be inefficient or wasteful, as it
would produce unintended positive effects in third countries.

In this respect, it must be underlined that
the move towards open access is a global one. Other major economies such as the
US, Brazil, Canada, Australia and China[119] are also
promoting open access. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US – the
biggest funder of medical research worldwide – mandates open access publishing.
A study[120] conducted in order to
estimate the positive and negative economic impacts of the open access
mandating policy of the NIH shows that almost two thirds of the estimated
potential incremental benefits of the mandating policy accrues in the US
itself, with just a third spilling over to other countries.

It can thus be concluded that, while it
should be expected that positive effects would be felt outside the EU, it would
be EU states who would be the greatest beneficiaries of the proposed policy
framework. The unintended positive effects elsewhere are worth accepting as a
trade-off.

Other reports point to the adverse effects
of not implementing open access policies in the EU. They suggest that Europe
risks losing out, should its research publications not be made open access. The
"Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific
publication markets in Europe," carried out for the Commission in 2006
remarks that "[a]s an increasing volume of high-quality research output
from outside Europe becomes openly accessible, it raises the question of the
visibility and accessibility, and of the subsequent potential impact, of
European research, as most articles by European researchers are published in
subscription-based journals."[121] This suggests that
going OA is indispensible if Europe wants to maintain the high level academic
and research prestige that it enjoys today. Without securing visibility for its
publications within the global academic community, Europe risks falling behind
in innovation, and reducing the competitiveness of its largely R&D-based
economic activity.

Impacts on governments and research
funding organisations:

Under an author-pays system, publication
costs accrue in the country funding the research. Research-intensive countries
might therefore be expected to face a disproportionate financial impact in
comparison to less-research intensive countries, who would be largely consuming
the output of research.

Available studies suggest, however, that
moving to a full Gold OA approach would generate substantial savings for all
MS, including research-intensive ones. The study 'Open Access – What are the
economic benefits?'[122] concluded that even a
research-intensive country like the UK could be expected to enjoy annual
savings of around € 480 million. The same study estimated the expected
savings for similarly research-intensive countries at € 133 million for
the Netherlands and around € 80 million for Denmark. Such studies have
been highly influential in policy development in the UK.[123]

Total costs for covering publication costs
are expected to remain below 1% of total R&D spending. The intended
tripling of the number of articles available in open access from a current 20%
to 60% of the total of those resulting from publicly funded research together
with an expected increase of the proportion of articles available in Gold OA as
of the total OA articles (from 40% to 50%) may raise the amount of articles
available in Gold OA to 30% of total article output. In terms of the costs
attached to it, this would result in a cost in the order of 0.2% of gross
R&D spending for a research-intensive country like the UK.[124]
For the EU27 this would result in a similar number even when compared to public
R&D spending only (0.31%).[125]

Some uncertainty remains as regards how
article processing charges, i.e. the costs paid for by research funders, would
evolve, and how they could be kept under control. Research funders would need
to set fixed-price caps for refundable publishing costs.

There is also a risk that overall public
spending on scientific publications may rise if publishers of 'hybrid' journals[126]
do not decrease journal subscription prices in proportion to revenue increases
from author-pays fees. Research funding organisations need to ask publishers to
establish a plan to make reductions (in the following subscription year) to
subscription prices, based on the number of open access articles in the
journals they publish, as the Oxford University Press and the American
Institute of Physics have done.[127]

From a public policy point of view, there
is an immaterial benefit resulting from the fact that the scientific
publication system continues to operate on the basis of the traditional
scientific journal, a tested dissemination channel.

Academic institutions (including their
libraries):

A move towards open access journals as the
basis for disseminating research outputs is expected to bring economic benefits
for academic institutions. The most research-intensive universities, however,
may face additional costs under certain circumstances.

The 2010 report by Alma Swan, 'Modelling
Scholarly Communication Options: Costs and Benefits For Universities,'[128]
examines potential savings in relation to the level of article processing
charges (APC). It suggests that there would be savings for all universities
when the APC is GBP 700 per article, or lower. Assuming an APC of above
GBP 700, but under GBP 1000, there would be benefits for all but the most
research-intensive universities. Savings for three out of the four universities
examined in the study, range from GBP 0.17 million to GBP 1.4 million per annum,
while the most research-intensive university studied would face extra costs of
around GBP 1.86 million per annum.

This suggests that, under this scenario,
research-intensive academic institutions would need additional institutional or
research-specific funding. The determination of the UK government to push for
open access despite these findings, as referred to above, should be noted.[129]

Researchers:

Researchers will benefit from wider access to
scientific publications in two ways. Firstly, they will have better access to
publications as readers.

Secondly, open access
increases the visibility of researchers as authors. OA publications are read by
a wider audience than publications in traditional subscription-based journals.
This increased visibility can be measured by the citation impacts of papers
published in OA. Statistics suggest that the citation impact doubles, when
compared to a comparable paper published in a subscription based journal alone.[130]

The Gold OA model presents little burden
and low risk. Existing journals would keep their reputations and continue to
serve as a means of dissemination, without any major structural changes.

The policy framework recommends the
adaptation of career reward mechanisms, and the research grant system, in a way
that supports and rewards researchers for OA publishing.

Publishers:

Scientific publishers appear to be relatively
comfortable with a move towards 'Gold' Open Access for publications, as it
would only require a change in funding patterns and is seen as a sustainable
business model.[131]

They have concerns about how to avoid
additional burdens in revenue collection. Publishers may not wish to interact
with each author individually, preferring to deal with a small number of
interlocutors. This concern can be addressed either by centralising the
reimbursement of author publication fees in research funding organisations, or
by using micropayment services like PayPal or Klarna.

Business/ SMEs:

Businesses would have better access to
scientific publications. The benefits of this have been described in a Danish
study, which suggested the lack of sufficient access to research results in an
average loss of 2.2 years in innovation progress for SMEs.[132]
Conversely, better access would lead to a corresponding gain in innovation
capacity.

Policy-makers:

Policy-makers would benefit from improved
access to scientific research publications to support evidence-based
policy-making.

Individual citizens:

Citizens would have better access to
scientific publications. With e-journals now being the rule, they could access
content directly from their homes.

Main
implementation of the policy framework by applying Green OA

Green OA refers to the practice of self-archiving,
i.e. the practice of authors or their institutions of depositing peer-reviewed
articles in either institutional or subject-based online repositories.
Peer-reviewed manuscripts can take the form of either a final published article
(the publisher's final version of record, including all modifications from the
peer review process, copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes –
usually a PDF document) or a final peer-reviewed article (including all
modifications from the peer review process but not yet formatted by the
publisher and thus without citable page numbers – also referred to as
post-print version).

Governments and research funding
organisations:

Governments and research funding
organisations are expected to save money with a move to Green OA. The Houghton
report, cited above,[133] estimates potential
savings of EUR 30 million p.a. for Denmark, EUR 50
million in the Netherlands, and EUR 125 million in the UK. The difference in
savings compared to the Gold OA model can be explained by the fact that there
are no subscription-costs, and there are additional savings in library handling
costs. Articles would continue to be published first in subscription-based
journals with citable page numbers, and to go through the associated
peer-review process.

Academic institutions (including their
libraries):

Academic institutions are expected to make
savings under the Green OA model. The study mentioned above[134]
highlights that savings resulting from increased efficiencies in the research
and library handling processes would range from GBP 0.1 million to GBP 1.32
million per annum.

Academic institutions are
expected to benefit in terms of increased visibility and presence on the
Internet for their research,[135]
and the resulting increased research impact factor.

Researchers:

Researchers will benefit from wider access to
scientific publications in two ways. Firstly, they will have better access to
publications as readers.

Secondly, open access
increases the visibility of researchers as authors.

Concerns[136] about the
lack of prestige for publications in a repository are unfounded. Self-archiving
is just one additional channel of dissemination after the article has been
published in a traditional journal. Articles are only made available online
after the applicable embargo period has expired. This means that the prestige
attached to publishing in high-reputation journals will remain.[137]

The policy framework recommends the
adaptation of career reward mechanisms and of the system of attribution of
research grants in a way to support and reward publishing OA by researchers.

Publishers:

Publishers are concerned that the
widespread implementation of mandates requiring delayed open access to final
published versions of articles, with short embargo periods and/or not
accompanied by sponsorship, could lead libraries to cancel subscriptions. They
argue that this would undermine subscription-based peer review journals, and,
ultimately, their business model. This concerns both traditional for-profit
publishers and learned societies that publish subscription-based journals.
Learned societies are as such not-for-profit organisations. Their publication
activities are profit-oriented, however, in order to raise revenue for
cross-subsidising other activities of the society. Open Access publishers are
not concerned by Green OA. They only publish under the Gold OA model.

The impact of Green Open Access on journal
subscriptions depends on two factors:

·
The length of the embargo period: the
factor which give the publisher time in which to recoup their investment.

·
The difference between the version of the
article in the repository and the final published version of the article.

·
The trade-offs in the implementation of Green OA
in terms of both the length of the embargo, and the version that will be
archived in the repository, are summarised in this graph:

A survey of librarians has suggested that
libraries may cancel subscriptions if embargo periods are too short.[138]
This issue is currently being addressed by the EC-funded PEER project. The
publishing industry is conducting research of its own on the impact of Green OA
on journal subscriptions.[139] Industry
representatives have also reported that there are a considerable number of
smaller scientific publishers and learned societies operating at single-digit
profit margins that would be hit by even small losses in terms of revenue from
Green OA.[140]

However,
there is currently not yet enough solid evidence on a correlation between
delayed Open Access and subscription cancellations:

·
Publishers appear to have adjusted to the
twelve-month embargo period required by the US National Institutes of Health
(NIH) without a significant loss of subscriptions[141].

·
Publishers appear to have likewise adjusted to
the six-month embargo period in place under the OA pilot in the EU's FP7 for
all sciences except for social sciences and humanities where the embargo period
is twelve months.

·
In spite of the uptake of Open Access
publishing, including more than 200 Open Access mandates worldwide, the profit
and margins of scientific publishers have remained healthy over recent years.[142]

There is a concern that the proposed policy
framework creates adverse effects also outside the EU on publishers established
in third countries. This is inevitable given the global nature of the
publishing industry that does to a large extent attract an international
authorship and is therefore indeed subject to different conditions imposed by
research funders. The concern disregards however that there is an international
trend towards Open Access policies[143] and consequently a move
also on the side of publishers to accommodate these policies by offering OA
publishing options or by consenting to self-archiving.

Business/ SMEs:

Business would be better off with increased
access to scientific publications, in particular, if the articles were
available in easily searchable online repositories.

The benefits have been described in a
Danish study, which suggested the lack of sufficient access to research results
in an average loss of 2.2 years in innovation progress for SMEs.[144]
Conversely, better access would lead to a corresponding gain in innovation
capacity.

Individual citizens:

Citizens would have better access to
scientific publications. Repositories could be easily searched online.

Comparison / trade-offs between Green
and Gold OA

Benefits/ costs analysis

A study undertaken for the UK assesses the
cost and benefits of open access to research publications.[145]
It concludes that both the Green and Gold open access
avenues have positive benefit/cost ratios. In the case of Green OA the benefit/
cost ratio ranged from 4.7 to 8.6, for the Gold OA model it ranges from 1.7 to
15.7.[146] The large divergence in
the numbers relating to the Gold OA can be explained by two different article processing charges assumed for the analysis.
The report actually distinguishes two 'Gold' scenarios.[147]

The study indicates that the best policy
option to pursue options is likely to be a mixture of Green and Gold OA.

Since the infrastructure of repositories is
already well developed in the country studied (the UK), Green OA would offer a
cost-effective means of increasing access. This would hold true also for a
large number of MS,[148] and all MS are expected
to set up such repositories in any event for preservation purposes. However, it
comes with risks to the current scholarly dissemination system, and may not be
self-sustainable. Gold OA, on the other hand, involves higher costs, but has
the advantage of its underlying sustainability. The study suggests that the
best policy option to pursue is likely to be a mixture of Green and Gold OA. It
recommends encouraging "the use of the existing green infrastructure
(whose costs are largely sunk)" since it appears capable of providing
increases in access comparable to or greater than other scenarios, one main
reason being that the infrastructure for self-archiving is built. It continues
to recommend to be "cautious about pushing for reductions in embargo
periods to the point where the sustainability of the underlying publishing
model is put at risk"; in parallel, to work to facilitate a transition to
'gold OA' (in specific disciplines first) provided that (i) the average level
of APCs remain at or below GBP1,995; (ii) the proportion of articles funded
through APCs moves broadly in line with global rates".[149]

Risks attached to the scenarios

In terms of the risks attached to
the two scenarios, the study distinguishes between risks to the scientific
dissemination system, mainly the impacts on the subscription-based journal
business model, and risks attached to the transition from the status quo to any
of the three open access scenarios:

Scenario || Risk to scientific dissemination system || Transition risk

Green || Higher risk. Greater potential for Green OA to undermine the business model on which it relies, if it leads to significant subscription cancellations. || Medium risk. Although many[150] academic institutions already have repositories, a significant shift in culture and practice is required amongst authors. Although this should be achievable, it requires significant impetus from funders and academic institutions.

Gold || Lower risk. Gold is considered a low risk scenario, since it provides an alternative to the subscription-based publishing business model. || Medium risk. There is a series of significant challenges in a transition to Gold OA. These include (for funders and academic research institutions) getting money in the right place; and (for publishers) adjusting their business models and cost structures. There are also risks associated with the distribution of costs in the transition, with a greater potential burden on research-intensive institutions.

Table 2: Risks by OA scenario

Source: Heading for the open road: costs
and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications[151]

5.3.2.     Implementation
in relation to open access to research data

The survey done by the PARSE-Insight
project[152] shows that only 25% of
researchers share their research data openly, only 11% make it available for
researchers within their research discipline and 58% make it available within
their specific research group. With a sustained effort on the part of Member
States and research funding bodies, the number of researchers sharing their
data openly could easily triple in a timeframe of 5 years, resulting in
benefits for both science and the economy.

Open access to research data has
consequences essentially for three (groups of) stakeholders:

Governments/ research funding
organisations/ academic institutions

Implementing open access to research data
requires the governmental level/ public budget to fund up and providing
sustainable funding for e-infrastructures. This will happen through the
intervention of intermediaries, such as e.g. university libraries responsible
for setting up e-infrastructures at their level, or nation-wide institutions,
depending on the size and the structure of each MS.

Scientific publishers

Scientific publishers have declared
themselves comfortable with open access to raw research data.[153]
In fact, publishers currently develop ways to interlink datasets in existing
data repositories with the electronic version of the published article.

Researchers/ Business/ individual
citizens

These are the principal beneficiaries of
open access to raw research data. While it might be assumed that researchers
are the group likely to be able to make the best use of raw data, the hidden
potential of businesses and individual citizens in this area should not be
underestimated.

Researchers would be able to test
hypotheses on other existing data sets, without the need to collect the same,
or similar, data themselves.

Researchers depositing 'their' data may
feel that they are being forced to 'give away' data without having extracted
all of its publication value. However, they need to understand that they
received public money to perform research in terms of one or several specific
hypotheses. They cannot, therefore, claim eternal ownership of the data beyond
the execution of the research they received the grant for.

In view of the fact that voluntary
compliance by researchers is an issue, the policy framework provides them with
career incentives and asks research funding organisations to take past
compliance with data deposit requirements into account when awarding new
research grants.

5.3.3.     Implementation
in relation to preservation

The impact in relation to preservation
produce essentially at two ends:

The governmental level/ public budget has
to fund any preservation effort, including the formulation of policy, setting
up and providing sustainable funding for e-infrastructures and ensuring the
long-term curation of the content. This will happen through the intervention of
intermediaries, such as e.g. university libraries responsible for setting up
e-infrastructures at their level, or nation-wide institutions, depending on the
size and the structure of each MS.

The cost factor is not only relevant for
access to scientific information, but also for its preservation.
Preservation activities are costly, but the investment pays for itself over
time. A cost/benefit analysis of the preservation of research data, undertaken
by the UK research funding organisation JISC, found that preservation efforts
lead to a fourfold return in terms of cost saving alone.[154]

At the user end, that is, for researcher's,
business and individual citizens, preservation is cost free, and would only
have positive effects.

5.3.4.     Effects
of scale

The policy framework asks governments/
academic institutions to set up e-infrastructures to provide access to, and
preservation of, scientific content. It should be emphasized that such
e-infrastructures would cover all three of the aspects described above: They
would include publications and data, as well as playing a preservation role.

The three aspects are described here
separately is for reasons of clarity. Separate infrastructures would not need
to be set up.

5.3.5.     Conclusion

The proposed policy framework is expected
to enhance access to scientific information – regardless of the implementing option
pursued by MS. Implementing open access to scientific publications does not
only have overall benefits in the order of € 1.8bn as a return on
investment in terms of R & D spending, but will also save money to
governments and research funding organisations, while maintaining a sustainable
system of dissemination of scientific publications for the medium and long
term. Those savings depend on the concrete mechanism of ensuring open access.
Likewise the precise impacts and risks attached to opening up access to
publications depend on way in which OA is assured. Impacts attached to the
Green OA model are subject to trade-offs.

Given the non-enforceable nature of a
Recommendation it can expected that some objectives will be only partially
achieved.

5.4.        Approximation
of MS legislation

Under this option the policy framework described
under option 3 would be implemented through an approximation of MS legislation.
The potential impacts are therefore largely the same as those described under
point 5.3. Under this option, a certain coherence of policies and practices
across the EU in terms of access to, and preservation of, scientific
information, would be achieved through hard legislation. Some Member States[155]
already have, for example, legislative provisions mandating open access to
research results. A Directive would unify these provisions and introduce them
where they do not exist so far. The binding force of the measure would make it
more efficient. However, considerations of subsidiarity and proportionality may
mean that only a very shallow level of harmonisation can be achieved.

This option has the disadvantage that
legislative provisions are more rigid, and harder to repeal, – in particular
when based on a Directive - should the policy produce unwanted effects.

The legislative process takes time, both at
European and national level. Based on current experience, a minimum of 3 years
has to be counted from the presentation of the legislative draft to the end of
the implementation period in Member States. During this process, stakeholders
may adopt a wait-and-see mentality and stop moving forward with their current
OA and preservation efforts.

5.5.        Comparison
of the policy options

The table below provides a summary of main
likely impacts and risks (with respect to the different economic and social
dimensions) arising from the policy options described. The signs represent a
scale of possible impacts vis-à-vis the "no change scenario": +
positive impact, O neutral impact, − negative impact
(using option 2 as a baseline).

IMPACTS AND RISKS || Option 1 Discontinuing existing EU action || Option 2 No policy change || Option 3 Policy framework implemented through a Communication and Recommendation to Member States || Option 4 Approximation of MS laws

SPECIFIC ACCESS, RE-USE AND PRESERVATION ISSUES

Access to and re-use of scientific information || − Unfavourable conditions due to discontinuation of existing EU action || O No change || + + Increase of favourable conditions for access and re-use through alignment of MS policies with clear targets || + + Increase of favourable conditions for access and re-use through alignment of MS policies with clear targets

Preservation of scientific content || − Unfavourable conditions due to discontinuation of existing EU action || O No change || + + Increase of favourable conditions through alignment of MS policies || + + Increase of favourable conditions through alignment of MS policies

Transparency || − Unfavourable conditions due to discontinuation of existing EU action || O No change || + Improved transparency (e.g. outputs of publicly funded research) || + Improved transparency (e.g. outputs of publicly funded research)

Costs and benefits for re-searchers/citizens || − Direct /indirect increase of costs || O No change || ++ Trigger wider accessibility and availability of scientific content at lower costs; gain to consumer welfare and economy at large from wider access and re-use of scientific content || ++ Trigger wider accessibility and availability of scientific content at lower costs; gain to consumer welfare and economy at large from wider access and re-use of scientific content

Administrative burden on public bodies || + − Removal of administrative burden of compliance with current EU practices || O No change || + − Limited burden, flexible approach, implementation of the policy framework at the stakeholder level; increase in order to improve/put in place a framework || − − Increased burden in order to implement a new EU regulatory framework through legislative measures

Legal certainty || − Legal uncertainty about practices at national level (e.g. embargo periods, preservation) || O || + Legal certainty improved by the introduction of EU guidance/recommendations || + + High degree of legal certainty ensured by approximation of MS legislation

Speed of implementation || − − Increase of legal uncertainty for access to and re-use possibilities and conditions for the availability of scientific information || No change || + + Policy framework is ready for implementation as of adoption; implementation in MS possible by 2014 || − − Postponement of positive effects of the policy framework due to the length of the legislative process and the transposition period

ECONOMIC ISSUES

Scientific publishers and competition || − Legal uncertainty and regulatory unpredictability due to MS's flexibility to define rules governing access and re-use; no impact on competition || O No change || + EU guidance/recommendations e.g. on OA and licensing conditions would provide incentives for new entrants to consider entering/developing the market;  Stimulation of competition among publishers (adaptation of business models, reduction of margin etc.) || − − An approximation of laws risks to represent a more rigid regulatory framework that would stifle competition in a dynamic and versatile industry already in a transition phase

Investment and Innovation || − Legal uncertainty and regulatory unpredictability; negative impact on incentives for innovation and investment || O No change || + Soft law measures stimulate the promotion of innovation and attract investment || + A legal framework sets an environment for innovation and investment

Internal Market || − − Increased fragmentation of internal market due to divergent national regimen || O No change || + Soft law measures stimulate a natural convergence on the internal market || + A legal framework imposes on the market a greater harmonisation of rules and approaches between MS; resistance can be opposed

SOCIAL ISSUES

Citizen empowerment/ public accountability || − − Increase of legal uncertainty and regulatory unpredictability || O No change || + Openness and governmental transparency || + Openness and governmental transparency

Employment and labour market || O No change || O No change || + Stimulation in line with EU's growth strategy Europe 2020 yet effects not noticeable in the short term || + Stimulation in line with EU's growth strategy Europe 2020 yet effects not noticeable in the short term

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Environmental Impacts || − Reduced access to environmental scientific information leads to less well informed policy decisions || O No change || + Improved access to environmental scientific information leads to better informed policy decisions || + Improved access to environmental scientific information leads to better informed policy decisions

5.6.        Evaluation
of the administrative burden

The preferred policy option allows Member
States to develop open access policies along different routes.

The burden will vary depending on the route
chosen by each Member State. It will vary among Member States and by research
activity, according to how research funding is organised at present. The
question of whether there is an extra administrative burden also depends on
whether the proposed policy has already been implemented, as is the case in
many Member States, and in many institutions.

As for "green OA", the US experience
suggests that the additional administrative burden would be reasonably small. The
Department of Health and Human Services reports that “[a]nnual operating costs
for [implementing the National Institute of Health - NIH - policy], including
ingest of articles, refinement of the submission system and search tools,
staffing of a help desk and a central coordinating office for NIH, are
approximately $3.5–$4.0 million per year. This represents a small fraction
[about one one-hundredth of 1%] of NIH’s budget authority of more than $30
billion per year.”[156] Evidence from the NIH
policy also suggests that the estimated time taken for researchers to deposit
their manuscripts in institutional repositories is only ten minutes.[157]

Introducing appropriate administrative
structures for "gold OA" within research organisation often requires
training and allocating new staff, which represent inevitable
implementation/compliance costs.

There may be initial implementation
problems for authors and funders as the new policy is introduced. European
research institutes/universities would need to allocate additional resources to
ensure greater compliance. This may, however, be more of an issue of a shift in
the work of research institutes/universities, and less a question of additional
staff.

5.7.        Conclusion

The comparison between options indicates
that Option 3 (Implementation of a policy framework through soft law)
offers the best balance between enabling wider and quicker access to scientific
information, and taking into account how science and scholarly publishing have
evolved over the past centuries. To mitigate the inherent non-binding character
of a recommendation, which per se cannot guarantee that action will be taken by
all Member States, a recommendation should foresee a close monitoring role for
the Commission. It would not favour any particular open access model. The
objective would be to define and move towards convergence, while allowing a
certain degree of flexibility for MS to take their national specificities into
account within a European framework, as well as for all stakeholders to endorse
improvements. In this context, a recommendation would be both a proportionate
and effective instrument.

6.           Monitoring
and evaluation

A monitoring and evaluation system would be
put in place to monitor the implementation of the Recommendation and assess the
extent to which the objectives are met.

6.1.        Continuous
monitoring

The Commission would ensure the overall co-ordination
of this action.

The core indicators of progress towards
meeting the identified objectives would be undertaken under the context of the ERA
framework with periodic reports from Member States on the implementation of the
Recommendation. This would not require many more resources than those used
presently to monitor the Council Conclusions on scientific information in the
digital age.

The establishment of an expert group in the
context of policy work leading towards the ERA is also envisaged. It would meet
on a regular basis to address specific issues in the area of access to, and
preservation of, scientific information.

In addition, the Commission has recently
launched a call for tender for the development of a set of indicators to
measure the growth of open access from 2000 onwards within the
ERA and beyond[158]. The following indicators, which may be refined depending on the
outcome of the tender, give examples of how to allow to measure progress in
access to and preservation of, scientific information in Europe: number and mandatory content of national OA policies; number and
mandatory content of research institutions/universities with an OA mandate;
number of repositories developed in Europe; nature and volume of content in
repositories; length and nature of embargo periods; compliance rates of OA
mandates by researchers; level of access (number of downloads of articles);
number of research institutions/universities supporting OA journals (willingness
to pay publication fees); number and mandatory content of research
institutions/universities with OA policies to data (datasets policy or
statement on access to and maintenance of research data); and number of
research institutions/universities requiring data management plans (requirement
to consider data creation, management or sharing in the grant application) etc.

6.2.        Evaluation

Two years after the adoption of the proposed
Recommendation, an evaluation would be carried out by a panel of experts
reporting to the MS and the Commission in order to assess:

·
The uptake and implementation of specific recommendations;

·
To what extent the Recommendation has
contributed towards its objective of improving access to and preservation of
scientific information;

·
The need to review or adapt the framework in
place.

On that basis the Commission will analyse
the need to take further action.

Annex 1: Main
aspects of the scientific information system

(1)
Why is dissemination of results important for
research and innovation?

In the
information economy, knowledge is the primary raw material and source of value,
and is therefore a source of competitive advantage. For this reason, it is
politically and economically crucial that there is wide and speedy access to
scientific information.

There are a
wide range of benefits to be gained from improving access to scientific
information and ensuring its sustainable long-term preservation. These include:
the acceleration of the research and discovery process, and its quality
assessment, leading to increased returns on R&D investment; the avoidance
of duplicative research efforts and enhanced opportunities for
multi-disciplinary research, as well as inter-institutional and inter-sectorial
collaborations. The sharing and exchange of knowledge, both within the
scientific community and from research to industry, enables participation by
all parts of society. It is particularly beneficial to small and medium-sized
enterprises and contributes towards the building of the Innovation Union.

(2)
How is scholarly publishing organised?

For historical
reasons, there is a reliance on scientific journals as the main channel for the
dissemination of scientific knowledge. Scientific journals perform the
following functions, which remain the standard in today's scientific world:
registration, certification (ensuring quality control through the so-called peer
review procedure), dissemination and navigation (providing filters and
signposts to relevant work amid all published material). Most researchers seek
peer recognition of the results of their research through publication in a
renowned journal. In addition, publishing in a high-impact factor scientific
journal, rather than any other, may have implications for the career prospects
of researchers in terms of tenure, research funding opportunities, and/or
consultancy roles. The elements mentioned above are often referred to as the
"publish or perish" paradigm.

Researchers
participate in the publication process at various levels: Traditionally they
have volunteered to peer-review articles written by fellow researchers on the
basis that they will be reviewed themselves. More recently publishers ask
researchers to submit their manuscripts already edited in the prescribed format
of the journal in view of reducing the costs of the editing work at the publishers
end. In general, researchers receive no royalties for publication of research
articles in journals, but only for textbook contributions.

Scientific
journals are normally sold to libraries, which represent the large bulk of the
revenue of the journals market, whilst individual subscriptions (both personal and
membership-based) have been falling for many years. Traditionally, library
sales took the form of subscriptions to individual journals. While this is
still an important part (currently around half) of the market, journals are
increasingly sold as bundles of titles, either directly to libraries or to
library consortia. These are the so-called "bundle deals" ("big
deals"), in which libraries subscribe to packages of electronic journal
titles from publishers at lower cost than the combined subscription price,
although "big deals" may include journals that libraries would
otherwise not want to subscribe to. This model involves institutional and other
subscribers paying for access to bundles of online journals through consortia
or site licensing arrangements. Consequently, libraries are reacting by forming
consortia to strengthen their bargaining power vis-à-vis publishers and to
share resources.

National
licensing schemes are one form of "big deal" whereby a national
funding organisation negotiates one single-access license for its territory.
Traditionally, such licensing schemes have been drawn up in cooperation with
academic institutions. However, such schemes may also cover other actors, such
as businesses or even every citizen.

In addition,
journals also offer a pay-per-view option, whereby one can access a single
article for EUR 25-50.

(3)
What is the Impact Factor and how is it
connected to scholarly publishing?

A researcher is
usually ranked according to the number of published articles of which (s)he is
the author or a co-author, along with the number of times those articles have
been cited in other articles. The results are weighted according to the
visibility of the journal in which the article or citation appears (the
"Impact Factor"). This mechanism has become increasingly significant
in recent years, as it is seen as a simple metric of output and efficiency by
research funders. But it has been criticized too, for publishers themselves are
usually providers of such services and as more comprehensive, sophisticated
metrics are being studied, proposed and developed. The pressure to publish in
journals has expanded into disciplines where it has historically not been
prevalent, for example to the social sciences, humanities and arts where books
and monographs are traditionally more important to researchers' reputations.

(4)
What is the economic dimension of
scholarly publishing?

Available
estimates[159] value the worldwide
Science Technical and Medical (STM) publishing market (which includes journals,
books, and secondary information services) at USD 16 billion (ca. EUR 11.6
billion). It is estimated that journal sales account for about 50% of the total
STM publishing market, with a market value of USD 8 billion in 2008, up by 6-7%
compared to 2007. This figure should, however, be interpreted with caution as
it does not include non-English language journals in the social sciences,
humanities and arts. The total European STM publishing market has an estimated share
of 30% of the total international STM publishing market, that is, EUR 4.8
billion in 2008. Using the average of the journals market estimates, this
suggests a European STM scholarly journal market value of EUR 2.4 billion in
2008.

There are in
the order of 2000 journal publishers, which can be divided into two groups:
for-profits (FP) and not-for-profits (NFP), the latter including learned
societies and university presses. FP publishers have been the main impetus
behind the growth of publishing activity. The main English-language trade and
professional associations for journal publishers include 657 publishers which
collectively produce around 11,550 journals, that is, about 50% of total
journal output by title. Of these, 477 publishers (73%) and 2334 journals (20%)
are not-for-profit. There were about 25,400 active scholarly peer-reviewed
journals in early 2009, collectively publishing about 1.5 million articles a
year. The number of articles published each year and the number of journals
grows by 3% and 3.5% per year, respectively.

The scientific publishing industry is
characterised by a set of 4 large publishers with a portfolio of up to 2000
journal titles. However, 95% of the some 2000 publishers worldwide publish only
one or two journals.[160] In general, scientific
publishing remains a solid and profitable business, despite the economic
crisis, the advent of the Internet and the development of new business models
and entrants to the market. This is particularly true for the larger
publishers. For example, Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of scientific
journals, with almost 2000, performed relatively well during the recession. In
2010, it made GBP 724 million (EUR 841 million) on revenues of GBP 2 billion
(EUR 2.3 billion) an operating-profit margin of 36%.[161]
Similarly, the results of Springer in 2010 were strong, with revenues reaching EUR
866 million and its EBITDA[162] reaching EUR 294 million,
representing a 33.9 % return on sales. Brill, a leading publisher in the Arts
and Humanities field, reported an operating-profit margin of 18%.[163]
The Oxford University Press also presented strong results in March 2011, lead
by the solid sales growth of its academic arm.[164]

Journal prices
vary widely depending on whether the publisher is FP or NFP, as well as on citation
numbers (see Table 3). As a general rule, journals published by FP publishers
cost more than journals published by NFP publishers (three times more, on
average).

|| Cost per page || Cost per Cite

For-profit || Not For-profit || For-profit || Not For-profit

Ecology || 1.01 || 0.19 || 0.73 || 0.05

Economics || 0.83 || 0.17 || 2.33 || 0.15

Atmosph. Sci || 0.95 || 0.15 || 0.88 || 0.07

Mathematics || 0.70 || 0.27 || 1.32 || 0.28

Neuroscience || 0.89 || 0.10 || 0.23 || 0.04

Physics || 0.63 || 0.19 || 0.38 || 0.05

Table 3: Journal prices by discipline
(Source: "The Costs and Benefits of Site Licences to Academic Journals",
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jan. 04, by C.T. Bergstrom and
T.C. Bergstrom)

(5)
What is open access (OA) and where does
it come from?

Open access,
which refers to the practice of granting instant, free internet access to
scientific research (including peer-reviewed journal articles), has two main driving
forces: the opportunities brought to the scholarly dissemination system by the
advent of the Internet, and the need to resolve the so-called 'serials crisis'.

The explosion
of interest and activity in OA journals has occurred largely due to the
widespread availability of internet access. It became possible to publish a
scholarly article and make it instantly accessible anywhere in the world, separating
the fixed cost of production from the minimal marginal cost of online
distribution. These new possibilities emerged at a time when the traditional,
print-based scholarly journals system was in crisis. While the supply of
journals seems to have been satisfactory in the decades before the electronic
transition, the 1975-1995 period has been dubbed the 'serials crisis.' It saw a
dramatic increase of over 300% above inflation in the price of journals sold by
FP publishers, and this before the big technological change of the electronic transition.
The price trend was similar for learned societies, though more moderate for
university presses (still in the order of 200% above inflation).[165]
This 'crisis' has been widely studied.[166] The aim of
the OA movement is to maximise research uptake, usage and impact, by making
research articles accessible to all potential users, rather than just those
whose institutions can afford the subscription. OA to journal articles can be
achieved in different ways, with two basic models: a) self-archiving (or Green
OA) and b) OA publishing (or Gold OA).

(6)
What is Green OA and how is it organised?

Green OA refers
mainly to the practice of self-archiving, i.e. the practice of authors or their
institutions of depositing peer-reviewed articles in either institutional or
subject-based online repositories. Peer-reviewed manuscripts can take the form
of either a final published article (the publisher's final version of record,
including all modifications from the peer review process, copyediting and
stylistic edits, and formatting changes – usually a PDF document) or a final
peer-reviewed article (including all modifications from the peer review process
but not yet formatted by the publisher and thus without citable page numbers –
also referred to as post-print version). In some cases, draft versions of the
paper that have not yet undergone the peer-review process are (also referred to
as the preprint version) deposited. This practice has the major disadvantage:
Readers essentially seek to have access to the final published article as it is
both peer-reviewed and has got citable page numbers.[167]
Many publishers maintain that public research funding grants do not cover more
than the author's manuscript and that the value they add to the subsequent versions,
essentially the final published version, are not covered by this. This is why
publishers have no difficulty with self-archiving of the author's pre-print
manuscript.[168]

A database of
publisher self-archiving policies is maintained by the SHERPA/RoMEO project.[169]
Of the 997 publishers included in the database:

·
57 % allow archiving of the author’s accepted
(peer-reviewed) manuscripts;

·
8 % allow archiving of the author’s original
manuscripts (not peer-reviewed);

·
35 % do not formally support archiving.

Some 64% of publishers, therefore, permit self-archiving
in some form. Publishers are, however, keen to impose embargo periods. The length
of the embargo period is the critical time for the publisher to recoup the
investment made into the publishing process in terms of organising the
peer-review, the layout and editing work and the costs attached to
dissemination of the journals (paper print and distribution, costs attached to
hosting the e-versions of the journals, sales management). Publishers explain
that the length of the embargo period depends on a multiplicity of factors,
among them: The scientific discipline, the rejection rate of
articles of the specific journal (i.e. the rate of the number of rejected
articles compared to published articles; it is the major cost driver as it
multiplies peer-review costs), frequency of the editions, possible revenue from
advertisement (not uncommon in high circulation journals such as Science or
Nature) and its circulation rate.[170]

A recent study
concluded that 11.9 % of OA scientific articles were published under Green OA.[171]

Research
funders have started requesting that the researchers they fund or co-fund deposit
copies of their accepted manuscripts into online repositories. However, given
the very low compliance rate by researchers to these requests (e.g. NIH
compliance rate below 5 % prior to 2008), many have changed this policy and now
formally require, or mandate, deposits in designated repositories, with, in
general, a six-twelve month embargo period before the content is made freely
available. The SHERPA Juliet website[172] lists
research funders' open access policies, including all the UK Research Councils,
the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the European Research
Council and the DFG. Many other institutions have similar mandates. At present,
the number of OA mandates worldwide is 222.[173]

Figure 7: Effects of Green OA funder mandates
on open access to publications

Open Access (OA) self-archiving percentages
for institutions with self-archiving mandates compared to non-mandated;

Source: S.
Harnad, What Is To Be Done. About Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly
Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research?[174]

Some journal
publishers have sought to negotiate individually with universities, research
institutes or funders in response to their mandates, in order to require
specific agreements. These usually involve increasing embargo periods for
authors depositing post-prints of their articles into repositories, or even
requesting embargo periods that go beyond what is already requiews by the
publishers' own policies.[175] In May 2011, the
national programme OpenAccess.se recommended that Swedish universities with
open access mandates refrain from making individual agreements with Elsevier.[176]

The new mandatory
policies implemented by institutions have had mixed results in terms of
compliance rates by authors/researchers. Some research funders (NIH, Wellcome
Trust, Minho University) have reported increases of up to 65% in compliance
rates (in the case of the NIH) by their researchers. However, other sources
show implementation rates by researchers remaining well below these figures
(e.g. 15 %). This demonstrates that, while researchers may claim to be willing
to deposit copies of their papers if required, they are either uninterested or
unaware of the potential benefits of implementing such a policy[177].

The EU-funded
project PEER[178] recently reported on
the perceptions, motivations and behaviours of authors and readers with regard
to repositories. One of the key findings of the research was that the number of
researchers who reported placing a version of their journal article(s) in an OA
repository within an 18 month period was negligible. The research also
highlighted that, at present, the project respondents consider funder and
institutional mandates to be relatively weak motivators for repository deposit,
due to their weak enforcement. Early research, however, suggests that if
institutions were to enforce OA mandates, researchers would feel compelled to comply
with them.[179]

Recently, the
League of European Research Universities (LERU) issued a "Roadmap towards open
access".[180] This initiative is
likely to foster the co-operation of research institutions in developing more
effective and user-friendly OA policies. The roadmap also acknowledges the fact
that more than mere mandates will be necessary in order to boost compliance
rates.

A variant of
self-archiving is the practice of delayed access. This describes an
article which is made available for free on the publisher's website, after an
embargo period set by, or agreed with, the publisher. The difference from
self-archiving is that the article is not put into a separate institutional or
subject-based repository; rather it is sourced from the publisher's database.

(7)
What is Gold OA and how is it organized?

Gold OA is the
model in which the costs of publishing are covered by authors (in practice,
usually by the funding bodies supporting them) or other sources (e.g.
sponsorship), rather than by subscription-paying readers. This type of
publishing is also referred to as the 'author pays' model. Two types of
journals exist: journals publishing only open access articles and hybrid
journals offering both open access and subscription articles. No embargo
periods are applied to open access articles. The hybrid model has been adopted
by many for-profit publishers and large scholarly societies. Hybrid journals
can be criticised for having the potential to increase revenues for the
publisher, while at the same time subjecting libraries to continuing price
inflation.

Article
publishing fees for full and optional OA journals now mostly fall in the rather
wide range of EUR 700-2100. New players in the market charge fees that are
lower than the standard industry average cost per article. Others such as BioMedCentral
and PLoS – key leaders of this OA route – have had to adjust and raise their
original fees to remain financially viable. PLoS raised its original fee of EUR
1000 to EUR 1500-2200 (depending on journal), while BMC has raised its fee from
its original fees to between €1250-€1450 for the majority of its journals.

Recent studies
suggest that, measured both by the number of journals as well as by the
increases in total article output, Gold OA journal publishing has grown rapidly,
particularly between the years 2000 and 2009. It is estimated that there were
around 19,500 open access articles published in 2000, growing to 191,850 in
2009. The journal count for the year 2000 is estimated to have been 740, and
4,769 for 2009; numbers show considerable growth, although the pace is slower
at article-level. These findings support the notion that OA journals have
increased both in number and average annual output over time, as illustrated below.

Figure 8: Growth of OA articles and journals[181]

Some research
institutions have established specific mechanisms within in their organisations
to support reasonable publication charges for articles written by their
research staff and published in Gold OA journals. In 2010 the Wellcome Trust
funded the publication of 440 articles, costing the organisation EUR 700,000.
This averages out at EUR 1,590 per paper.

The Compact for
Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE)[182] is a
commitment undertaken by 13 universities (including Harvard, Dartmouth and CERN)
Signatory universities commit to the developing mechanisms for supporting
reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and
published in OA journals, and for which other institutions would not be
expected to provide funds.

Figure 9: Expected uptake in Gold OA

Source: Poynder,
Open Access by numbers, p. 14[183]

(8)
What are the estimated benefits of OA?

Research[184] has been
undertaken to assess the economic benefits derived from open access to
research results. The potential economic impacts of wider access to research
publications can be estimated in detail using a modified Solow-Swan model[185].
This methodology allows the estimation of increases in returns to R&D due
to increases in accessibility and efficiency arising from OA policies. This
model provides estimates on total annual gains resulting from one year's
R&D expenditure. It gives separate estimates for the (overall) Gross
Domestic Expenditure and for public expenditure (government and higher
education expenditure) alone. The model suggests that assuming a 20% return on
R&D a 5% increase in accessibility and efficiency due to open access
policies would result in annual gains of EUR 4.8 billion for Gross Domestic Expenditures
on R&D and EUR 1.8 billion for government and higher education expenditures
on R&D for the EU27. This suggests that permanent increases in
accessibility and efficiency due to OA publishing can be converted to recurrent
growth rates.

EU27 || || || || ||

GERD || Rate of return to R&D

EUR 236,553 million || 20% || 30% || 40% || 50% || 60%

Per cent change in accessibility and efficiency || Recurring annual gain from increased accessibility & efficiency (million)

1% || 951 || 1,426 || 1,902 || 2,377 || 2,853

2% || 1,911 || 2,867 || 3,823 || 4,778 || 5,734

5% || 4,849 || 7,274 || 9,699 || 12,123 || 14,548

10% || 9,935 || 14,903 || 19,870 || 24,838 || 29,806

Table 4: EU27 – Increase in returns to
R&D due to increases in accessibility and efficiency arising from open
access[186]

In addition to
the economic benefits accruing for society as a whole, disseminating research
results through OA benefits individual researchers. There is an on-going debate
about whether OA increases research impact over and above the impact already
gained through the subscription-access system, by increasing the visibility,
discovery and accessibility of research articles. The possible components of
the OA advantage can be identified as general (citable articles become
available to new audiences who would find them citable), earliness (the earlier
an article is put before a potential audience, the more this affects subsequent
citation patterns), selection bias (authors make their best articles more
readily available OA on than their poorer articles), and quality advantage (better
articles gain more from the general OA advantage because they are, by
definition, more citable than poorer articles).

Another study undertaken by Houghton for
the UK shows benefits/ costs ratios for three different scenarios relating to
wider access to research publications.[187]

The scenarios analyzed were:

–
Green Access –
referring to self-archiving of accepted manuscripts into repositories driven by
funder mandates;

–
Gold Access – referring
to publication of manuscripts in OA journals after payment of a publication fee
(article processing charge);
it is subdivided into two sub-scenarios assuming a high and a low article
processing charge (APC):
the high APC was set at ₤ 2,346 – corresponding to the "observed per-article publishing
costs for author-side payment journals" (subtracting any assumed
contribution from other funding sources, such as advertising) based on activity
cost estimates sourced from publishers (adjusted to 2010 levels);
the lower APC was set at ₤ 1,457 –
corresponding to weighted average charges currently being paid to Gold
publishers;

|| Green || Gold (higher APC) || Gold (lower APC)

Costs || ₤45.0m || ₤152.9m || ₤28.3m

Savings || - || ₤80.5m || ₤121.0m

Total net costs || ₤45.0m || ₤72.4m || -₤92.6m

Economic benefits || ₤211.6m – ₤385.8m || ₤184.1m – ₤325.1m || ₤184.1m – ₤325.1m

Benefit – cost ratio || 4.7 – 8.6 || 1.7 – 2.7 || 10.8 – 15.7

Table 5: Benefit/ cost ratios for selected OA
models

There is also
research undertaken in relation to the advantage for scientists in terms of an increased
number of citations for OA articles: A meta-analysis undertaken by A. Swan[188]
in 2010 concluded that 27 out of 31 research papers looking into this matter
suggest that OA articles are more cited than non-OA articles.

Size of OA citation advantage by discipline || % increase in citations with Open Access

Physics/ Astronomy || 170-580

Mathematics || 35 to 91

Biology || -5 to 36

Electrical engineering || 51

Computer science || 157

Political science || 86

Philosophy || 45

Medicine || 300 to 450

Communication studies (IT) || 200

Agricultural sciences || 200 to 600

Table 6: Citation advantage by discipline

Source: Data from: Swan, 'Open Access
citation advantage'[189]

(9)
How is scientific information preserved?
What are the challenges?

The issue of
the digital preservation of scientific information concerns how the digital
record of science can be stored efficiently, and kept accessible,
understandable and re-useable in the future. The increasing quantity of native-born
digital scientific information, be it as scientific journals, data or software,
has shifted the balance, roles and responsibilities regarding digital
preservation. In the analogue world, the task of long-term preservation was the
sole responsibility of libraries, but this is not longer the case.

With the advent
of the Internet, most scientific journals are accessed from publishers' servers,
and therefore many libraries do not possess physical copies of the journal articles
that need to be preserved. It therefore falls to publishers to ensure permanent
long-term access to scientific information. A PARSE-Insight study looked into
the preservation of scientific content in Europe.[190]
It showed that most scientific journals (93 %) are subject to preservation
measures or policies implemented by publishers. The same study shows, however, that
only 23% of small publishers have reported undertaking a dedicated preservation
strategy. Some publishers (52 %) have transferred preservation responsibilities
to a third party (for example, JSTOR, Portico, LOCKSS). Alternative solutions
are also being implemented, notably through national library services such as
the e-Depot at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Netherlands. Its digital
archiving services are available to publishers worldwide and are used by many
major publishers. It is also considering developing preservation services for
open access journals.

While the
PARSE-Insight Study highlighted that the preservation of scientific journals is
reasonably well-organised at present, there is concern about entrusting
preservation entirely to private enterprises. Their preservation efforts depend
on the underlying business case and the economic well-being of the company.

Legal deposit,
i.e. the obligation for content producers to make one or more copies of
scientific publications available to a designated deposit body, is a central
issue for preservation. Although Member States have started extending deposit
arrangements to digital information, this is progressing at different speeds
and covers different types of information. PEPRS (Piloting an E-Journals
Preservation Registry Service) is a registry service providing easily
accessible information about inclusion of journals in preservation services and
highlighting those e- journals for which no arrangements exist.[191]

The investment required
to set up a repository is estimated to be between USD 8000 (EUR 5800) and USD
1,800,000 (EUR 1,309,000), with a mean of USD 182,550 (EUR 132,800) and a
median of USD 45,000 (EUR 32,700). The estimated cost of the daily ongoing
operations budgets is USD 8600 (EUR 6250) to USD 500,000 (EUR 364,000), with a
mean of USD 113,543 (EUR 82,585) and median of USD 41,750 (EUR 30,370). The
success of institutional repositories will depend largely on the compliance
rate by researchers in depositing their manuscripts. Recent data estimates that
the average number of journal articles in repositories is 7523 plus a further
6888 articles from non-refereed publications.

(10)
Why and how are research data different
from publications?

The pace of
innovation in data-intensive research is increasing rapidly. Researchers collect huge amounts of data, but this data – even when
underpinning scientific publications – is only rarely available. Even when it
is available, it may not be presented in a form that is easily understandable and
reusable by others. In many scientific fields, each dataset is unique, costly
and irreproducible; if the data is not preserved, it is lost for ever. As an
illustration, analysing the state of the Earth, its environment and its
variability over time, requires a large number of observations. It is
impossible to go back in time and resample environmental data; therefore global
and complete measurements need to be taken. Earth observations are of unique
value to understanding climate change and natural hazards, and in developing an
appropriate response to climate change and related threats.

Opening up opportunities to access and
(re)use this data in combination with its related publications, and to build on
it, e.g. through data-mining, will benefit innovation and research.

The potential benefits of increased access
to, and re-use of, research data include:

·
maximised investment in data collection;

·
broader access where the cost of repeating
research would be prohibitive for individual researchers/institutions;

·
potential for new discoveries from existing
data;

·
increased research impact and reduced time-lag
in realising those impacts;

·
new collaborations and new knowledge-based
industries would form;

·
increase in data quality and prevention of
fraudulent behaviour by researchers;

·
transparency in research funding;

·
increased visibility and promotion of
institutions and researchers;

·
enabling greater cross-sector collaboration and
opportunities including researchers outside the core of higher education and
public sector research networks, researchers in industry, government and
non-government organisations;

The increasing availability of primary
sources of data in digital form has the potential to shift the balance away
from research based on secondary sources (such as scientific publications),
thus positioning data as the central element in the scientific process. In this
context, the ability of researchers to extract further meaning from masses of
data stored in institutional, national or community repositories is a key
factor. The deployment of standardised mechanisms to store, archive,
authenticate, access, transfer, preserve, curate,
certify and interpret scientific data is therefore required. Furthermore, the
deployed scientific data infrastructure will require adaptation in cultures and
new approaches and competences, given the intrinsic relation between data and
associated software to read, interpret and process it. Some publishers are
taking steps to sustain the scientific record by creating permanent links
between the journal article with the relevant databases, an action positively
seen by researchers. It is important that these efforts
are made jointly with those responsible for the long-term accessibility and
preservation of these databases.

We may also see
the emergence of re-use 'industries' in some areas of
research and observation (e.g. with geospatial, meteorological and
oceanographic data, etc.,), with activities stimulating storage, discovery and
access to datasets.

Studies have
been undertaken on the preservation of data by researchers[192].
40% of researchers have reported that they store between 1GB and 1TD of data. 11%
are not aware of how much information they store. There is a variety of places
where data are stored: 59% report to lodge data into a server of the
organisation they adhere to, 51% keep data on their personal workstation. Only
20 % submit data to a digital archive. It may be concluded therefore that there
is a certain lack of trust on the side of researchers on the capability of
digital repositories to provide adequate research data.

Very few
research funding organisations and universities undertake proper research data
preservation activities. Quality standards for content in terms of authenticity
and provenance, and quality standards for services are critical to both access
and preservation of research data. Digital preservation solutions are
undoubtedly partly technical, and the tools being created will enhance digital
longevity, but these solutions are also equally dependent on organisational
issues. Many significant challenges remain before a highly
efficient and accessible infrastructure populated with useful scientific data
can exist. Many of the challenges outlines are already being addressed, but further
efforts are needed in the following areas:

·
Authentication mechanisms are needed to make
sure that data and collections can be trusted The data need to be in a form
that makes reuse possible;

·
Interoperability of data resources is needed to
make collaboration among research teams and disciplines possible;

·
The security and integrity of data resources
should be improved to increase the confidence of data creators.

Another development is the formation of virtual
communities of researchers participating in large-scale web-based
collaborations. Within those communities, researchers are opening up their
results at an early stage to the research community and interact with other
researchers who can analyse the data or re-use them with other datasets.

Enhanced information
technologies produce ever-growing amounts of data: As
reported in the report "Riding the wave": Currently,
about 2.5 petabytes – more than a million, billion data units – are stored away
each year for mammogrammes in the US alone[193]. These could
be a goldmine of data for epidemiological and drug research, if made accessible
in appropriately anonymous form to researchers. Another example is decoding of
the human genome and genome-based research: By August 2009, digital records of
more than 250 billion DNA bases, from various species, were stored in the US
government’s public GenBank database. An entirely new discipline of science had
emerged: systems biology. This uses computers to simulate, at the sub-molecular
level, exactly how DNA, proteins and the other chemical components of life
interact – and in time, it will transform the practice of health sciences.

A robust
infrastructure including technological and organisational aspects is needed in
order to maximise the effectiveness of use and re-use of research data,.

In addition to
the challenges these vast amounts of research data create, they also open the
possibility to completely new ways of doing science. In data-driven science,
this abundance of research data can be explored to create and test new
hypotheses. There is now widespread recognition that data are a valuable
long-term resource and that sharing them and making them publicly available is
essential if their potential value associated with re-use is to be realised.

Given the increasing importance attained to
research data, many research funding organisations/universities are introducing
measures to encourage and facilitate research data publishing and making it
widely available for access and re-use, in particular when those datasets have
been produced with public funding. This approach requires effective planning
and management of data through the life-cycle of a project. Although in general
funding bodies tend towards encouragement rather than enforcement, funding
bodies such as the UK Research Councils, NIH and NSF have developed several
sets of actions that may be seen as paving the way for a pan-European approach.

The issue of economic sustainability of
digital preservation has been object of several studies aiming at identifying
the necessary conditions and actions to be implemented to achieve
sustainability in the long term. The study "Sustainable Economics for a
Digital Planet: ensuring long-term access to digital information Blue Ribbon
Report"[194] has identified six
necessary conditions:

·
Timely actions to ensure access;

·
The recognition of the benefits of preservation
by decision makers;

·
The selection of materials with long-term value;

·
Incentives for decision makers to act in the
public interest;

·
Appropriate organization and governance of
preservation activities;

·
On-going and efficient allocation of resources
to preservation.

(11)
How much is the European Union investing
into research?

EU Member
States' investment in R&D, reached EUR 236 billion in 2009. Under the
Lisbon Agenda, the EU's goal in the area of R&D was to achieve a R&D
intensity (i.e. expenditure as a percentage of GDP) of at least 3 % by 2010. Two
thirds of R&D expenditure were set to be financed by the private sector. However,
in 2009 R&D intensity stood at 2.01 % (compared to 1.9 % in 2007). R&D
intensity remains significantly lower in the EU than in other major economies.
The 3 % intensity target will still be maintained for the next ten years as one
of the key targets of the Europe 2020 strategy. Given the above, the EU's stakes
in efficient access and dissemination are high, not only because the output of
the scientific publishing process of crucial importance for society’s
development, but also because its investments are very relevant, since much of
this activity is publicly funded. The combined R&D expenditure in 2009 public
sources accounted for 36 % of the EU's R&D expenditure, or EUR 87
billion[195].

Opening up
access to research results is an important way to maximize the society's
collective investment on research.

FP7 is running
over the period 2007-2013 is endowed with a total budget of over € 50 billion
accounting for 4 percent of the EU budget. The framework programme accounts for
about 5-6 percent of EU's overall budget for the same period.

In line with
the EU’s high investment in research, framework programme projects generate
many publications and thereby contribute directly to Europe’s total output in
terms of scientific publications. Some indications on the publication output of
Community (co-)funded research can be given on the basis of earlier programmes.
For example the first figures of the OA Pilot in FP7 indicate that so far the
total number of publications harvested by OpenAIRE is 1275 of which 1204 are
OA.[196]

Annex 2:
Executive summary of the 2011 Questionnaire to European Research Area Council

In late 2008,
the European Commission prepared a questionnaire on OA and preservation
policies in Europe, with a view to taking stock of the status of implementation
of the 2007 Council conclusions on Scientific Information. The questionnaire
was presented to CREST members and observers, who in some cases designated
national experts to respond to it. After replies were collected, a summary of
responses was prepared, released and presented to CREST in 2009. It
highlighted that many initiatives existed at the level of universities,
research councils and other non-governmental organisations, but that national
policies were still lacking. The Commission has taken the initiative of
updating the collective knowledge available on the situation in Europe with a
second questionnaire to ERAC members and observers. The questionnaire was sent
to all ERAC members and observers on 25 November 2010. The Commission received
29 responses between 21 December 2010 and 11 March 2011.

(1)
Access and dissemination

Much of the
debate revolving around access to scientific information has focused on
peer-reviewed scientific publications in journals (publications resulting from
research projects partly or fully publicly funded), but further areas are also
crucial, for example doctoral and masters theses and research data. Research
results are generated and circulate within specific environments and raise
specific legal issues such as copyright and VAT rates for electronic products.
Moreover, repositories play a crucial role in collecting, preserving and
disseminating digital intellectual output from research. Other issues deal with
access and dissemination activities at national level. They include overall
national policies regarding publications and data, the development of
repositories and stakeholder involvement.

(2)
Implementation of the 2007 Council
Conclusions on Scientific Information

In addition to
asking respondents to describe the policies in place for dissemination of and
access to scientific information, some closed questions were included in the
survey, for example whether, generally speaking, the situation regarding OA has
improved since 2009 (previous survey), and whether the country has experienced
problems implementing the 2007 Council Conclusions on Scientific Information.
The general impression is that, compared to 2009, the situation has improved in
many countries. Only very few respondents have replied that there has been no
improvement at all in their country.

(3)
General policies and strategies

Respondents
were asked to describe the policies in place for the dissemination of and
access to scientific information, including information on how these policies
are financed. A growing number of countries have put or are currently putting
in place clear strategies regarding access and dissemination, usually with a
focus on open access or repositories. Open access has been incorporated into
national strategy for science and research in some countries. As regards
infrastructure, national archives for open access content or national
harvesting systems that can access open access material through national
portals have been set up in some countries.

(4)
Open access to publications resulting
from publicly funded research

Open access
refers to free-of-charge accessibility of outputs, such as research articles,
over the Internet. A frequent bottleneck to achieving a more widespread use of
open access and faster development of policies is lack of awareness and
understanding of open access amongst researchers and policymakers. The
questionnaire asked respondents to describe policies and other arrangements in
place aiming to provide open access to peer-reviewed scientific journal
articles resulting from public research funding. Some countries have made
considerable progress on open access, while others are slower to initiate
developments. At institutional level, individual universities have launched
projects on open access, and there has been progress on the development of
deposit and curation points. Some countries have high-level OA and preservation
policies. At national level, arguments for open access have successfully been
taken to the governmental level in some countries, and in some cases even
incorporated into the national strategy for science and research. Where
national-level or institutional-level policies have been adopted, there is
success in increasing the amount of material openly available and in raising
awareness of open access amongst authors. Policies usually make the case for
open access and are accompanied by guidance to researchers. However, a
relatively good level of policy development does not mean that open access has
been fully achieved in the EU.

(5)
Open access to other publicly funded
research results

While the
debate on open access has up to now focused on scholarly literature, research
data (be they numerical, graphical, audio or video files, etc.) and the general
objective of gaining open access to data (‘open data’) is increasingly in the
spotlight. The importance of research data is likely to grow in the coming
years as information society tools have made it possible to access data
directly, and because new information services are combining journal articles
and data, hence applying new search techniques such as data mining. There are
already many policies from research funding agencies covering the accessibility
of data created during work they have funded, and the number is expected to
grow. Further developments are linked with e-science infrastructures and with
relevant intellectual property rights issues. Policies on open access to
research data remain less developed than policies on open access to
publications, but the general concern for unlocking the full value of
scientific data is growing, as reported in the 2010 report ‘Riding the wave':.
Several respondents referred to European projects such as Europeana and
e-infrastructures, activities that are typically covered in the European
Commission by the Directorate-General for Information Society and Media. Some
respondents also mentioned activities in the European Bioinformatics Institute
(EBI), which is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics that
manages databases of biological data and provides free access to all its data
resources. Less in the public eye than publications and data are doctoral and
masters theses. Open access to this highly valuable resource is progressing
rapidly in Europe and is encountering fewer obstacles than publications and
data.

(6)
Repositories of scientific information

Well-designed
e-infrastructure can enhance access and dissemination. In infrastructural
terms, Europe is doing well. Replies to the question about repositories show a
great deal of successful national activities, and many of these look to
standards developed at European level. There are too many initiatives in Europe
to be reported in an exhaustive manner, but they are all paving the way towards
open access. Several countries have created national repository
infrastructures. As reported by one respondent, this is both a complex and
dynamic situation since the infrastructure is provided and supported by a
number of independent organisations, including funders and universities. As
illustrated in the comment of another respondent, there are many important
initiatives that are growing fast, but they can easily remain ‘islands’ that
are not sufficiently interconnected.

(7)
Specificities of research results

The Internet
makes instant access to and dissemination of information possible. New
information and communication tools offer innovative ways to add value. The
rapidly increasing use of digital content in research and in the dissemination
of knowledge has quickly become a main characteristic of modern science,
challenging traditional ways in which research is conducted. Repositories are
important places to store knowledge, but scientific journals still hold a
central role within the scientific information system. The peer-review process
remains the central quality-control mechanism, and journals remain a main
vehicle for spreading research results. Technological changes have offered
publishers tremendous opportunities that they have embraced in a creative way,
but they also brought about complexity in areas such as copyright and VAT
rates. Business relationships with publishers remain of a complex nature for
all actors involved. Despite the fact that most governments keep investing in
the dissemination of scientific information, research libraries often have to
find creative solutions within a limited budget, and despite their increasing
responsibilities for access and dissemination. Moreover, journals are still
central for scientists’ careers in connection with journal impact factors, the
criticised, but much-used bibliometric indicator. Finally, open access is
developing rapidly but ways of measuring its growth and impact are still under
development.

(8)
Long-term preservation

Long-term
preservation is a closely related, yet distinct, issue from access and
dissemination. Preservation concerns ensuring the long-term storage, care and
continuing free accessibility of (research) outputs. It is something that has
largely fallen to national libraries or other national-level organisations to
tackle. There are also significant players in the area of preservation on an
international scale. While many of the responding countries have put in place
notable initiatives or strategies regarding the digital preservation of
cultural heritage in general, specific attention to the preservation of
scientific information needs to be further developed within most existing national
policies and legislative frameworks. Moreover, researchers do not seem to
always be aware that the preservation of scientific information articles and
data is a key issue, although some progress has been made.

(9)
Cooperation and coordination

Global challenges
call for global responses. The question regarding cooperation focused on
coordination among Member States in order to define common national funding
body principles on open access, to improve the transparency of the contractual
terms of "big deals" financed with public money, to assess the
possibilities for achieving economies of scale, and to achieve the
interoperability of repositories. There are many networks and national or
international events, as well as projects and conferences in which professionals
and relevant stakeholders meet. The goal is often how to identify common
agendas and how to implement common initiatives. The role of international
organisations and umbrella structures is regarded as crucial. The involvement
of all stakeholders is very important, whether on the topic of revisiting
agreements with publishers, coordinating advocacy activities or encouraging the
sharing of good practices.

(10)
Role of the European Commission and the
European Union

Discussions
involving the Commission, other European institutions and European governments
help to define the Commission’s guidance for national authorities and bodies.
The question asked in this section was about the role that respondents see for
the European Commission/EU. Answers sometimes went further than considering how
and when, in a sector where both public and private interests are strong, the EU
can speak with a ‘single voice’. Respondents were generally very favourable
regarding the role that the Commission and/or the EU has or could develop
further, whether on specific topics (data, copyright etc.) or regarding the
benefits that Member States could derive from EU action. As one respondent
underlined, there is considerable potential for international bodies to play a
leading role in coordinating both nationally and internationally funded work.
It is increasingly important that national infrastructures, embedded in
national university and research environments, are seen as the basis on which
international developments build in many disciplines, perhaps especially
outside ‘big science’. It was generally felt that the European Commission has
the position and visibility to play a leading part in the debate on access to
and preservation of scientific information.

Annex 3: Survey
on Open Access in FP7 – summary of responses.

In May 2011, the Commission identified the
811 projects concerned at the time and sent a questionnaire to all project
co-ordinators in order to collect feedback on experiences on both the
implementation of the pilot and the reimbursement of OA publishing costs. 194
answered were received by the end of August 2011. They provide important input
for the future of the OA policy and practices in Horizon 2020 (the future EU
Framework Programme for Research and Innovation), and for the preparation of a
Communication from the Commission and Recommendation to Member States on
scientific publications in the digital age.

Results

General considerations

For almost 60% of respondents who expressed
an opinion, getting a common understanding in the consortium on how to best
share research outcomes is considered easy or very easy. Also for 60% of
respondents with an opinion, understanding legal issues regarding copyright and
licences to publish is difficult or very difficult.

Self-archiving (Open Access Pilot in
FP7)

The majority of respondents find it easy or
very easy to have time or manpower to self-archive peer-reviewed articles and
also to inform the Commission on the failure of making best efforts to ensure
open access to the deposited articles. Many respondents however do not know the
toolkits provided by the Commission for the purpose of offering support to
beneficiaries of projects participating in the pilot. Nevertheless when they
do, the majority of respondents with an opinion find them useful.

Identifying a new, satisfactory publisher
is rather difficult for the majority of respondents, yet 40% of respondents
with an opinion find it easy or very easy. Changing publisher or journal is
also rather difficult for the majority of respondents – and is equally
difficult to all FP7 research areas concerned, yet 35% of respondents with an
opinion still find it easy or very easy. Difficulties are arising when the
implementation of the OA mandate becomes concrete: negotiating with the
publishers/journals is considered difficult or very difficult by almost 75% of
respondents with an opinion.

Half of respondents do not know or have no
opinion about which publishers to be in contact with regarding their open
access publications. For the majority of respondents who had contact or intend
to have contact with publishers, Reed Elsevier comes first, closely followed by
Springer, then Wiley-Blackwell, Nature Publishing Group and Taylor &
Francis. AAAS and Sage are also named.

Respondents reported a total of 534
articles deposited or to be deposited in a repository, out of which 406 are or
will be open access. According to the figures given by respondents, a total of
68 articles are both deposited and made open access. Reasons given for not
providing open access are first the publisher's copyright agreement that does
not permit deposit in a repository, followed by lack of time or resources. The
highest number of articles deposited is in FP7 research area ICT, followed by
the areas Environment and Health. There are more articles deposited as the
project is older.

The EU-funded portal OpenAIRE ('Open Access
Infrastructure for Research in Europe'[197]) has been
supporting the pilot since 2009 with mechanisms for the identification,
deposit, access and monitoring of FP7-funded articles. Half of respondents did
not know about the portal before answering the questionnaire, the other half
had known it mostly through the CORDIS website and various EC-related events,
yet word of mouth and contact with their EC project officers were also
reported.

OA publishing (Reimbursement of costs
in FP7)

The majority of respondents did not know
about the possibility to request full reimbursement of publication costs during
the lifespan of FP7 projects and only 25% of respondents with an opinion think
that the option is well-known in the consortium. Nevertheless, the older the
project, the more known the option. In total, almost half of respondents
replied they intend to make use of this possibility in the future.

Only eight projects among all respondents
reported the use of reimbursement of OA publishing so far, with total costs
from 0€ up to 6100€. Seven replied they would use this possibility again, only
one was not sure.

When asked about financial aspects, about
half of respondents are of the opinion that it is expensive (i.e. it is better
to spend project money on other activities), the other half of respondents is
not of such opinion. The vast majority of respondents are of the opinion that
the possibility of reimbursement of OA publishing costs is restricted by the
fact that most publishing activities occur after the project end (i.e. too late
for reimbursement to be claimed).

Nonetheless, almost 70% of those
respondents with an opinion think that it is better to use self-archiving than
OA publishing to satisfy the open access requirement in FP7.

OA policy in the EU Framework
Programmes

The questionnaire was taken as an opportunity
to ask forward-looking questions with regards to open access to data, the best
sources of information about EC policies in the field, and EC support to FP7
researchers.

Three quarters of those respondents with an
opinion would agree or strongly agree with an OA mandate to data in their
research area, providing that all relevant aspects (e.g. ethics, confidentiality,
intellectual property etc.) have been considered and addressed. There are some
differences depending on the FP7 research area with most agreement in
Environment, ICT and e-Infrastructure, and less agreement in Energy. Only a
small number of respondents, 13%, have no opinion on the question.

CORDIS website and the Participants Portal
are considered together the best source of information to get information about
future EC OA policies. EC project officers and national contact points are also
highly ranked. OpenAIRE is also viewed as a valuable source of information.

In a last question, project co-ordinators
were asked how the European Commission could help researchers comply with its
OA policy. For many respondents, the implementation of open access can be
perceived as a burden. Most comments relate to the following five main
categories, in order of importance:

·
Information: The
prevailing comment is, unsurprisingly, about information, the lack thereof and
the best ways to inform project co-ordinators and the consortium on open access
requirements in FP7. Information is welcome at every stage of the process, from
the launch of the call, to the time of contract negotiations, the signature of
the grant agreement, the kick-off meeting and the outset of the project. Many
respondents stress the need to send an info-package to all applicants to FP7
calls, make use of reminders, and inform administrative persons in charge of EU
funds as well as National Contact Points.

·
Publishers: There
are many comments asking the European Commission to inform publishers of FP7
requirements (in fact it is already the case for all main publishers) and
directly negotiate with them. In practice, there are suggestions to encourage
publishers to agree on modifications to bring on their usual rules on copyright
and licences, to force them to lower their fees, or to make papers available on
the project's website regardless of the publisher's policy. Some respondents
ask to put more workload on the publishers and less on the projects, others
encourage policy actions. There is also a proposal to ask the Commission to set
up its own peer-reviewed open access publication mechanism.

·
Promotion: There
are many comments focusing on the promotion of the benefits of open access in
general and training of all involved partners (including within the
Commission), with a stress to inform (sometimes reinsure) private partners that
benefit of FP7 funds of the benefits of open access.

·
Self-archiving and OA publishing: many respondents suggest setting a system that would fund OA
publishing separately from the grant agreement and its limitation in time.
There is no apparent preference from one system (self-archiving) above the
other (OA publishing).

·
Support and assistance: Many suggestions are made to offer support and assistance to
grantees such as having a Commission help desk (in fact already a feature of
OpenAIRE). The Commission is asked to be concrete and detailed in its guidance,
but also simple, short, to the point and updated. Support on how to deal with
legal issues related to IPR and licences is also welcome.

Additional comments focus on the
enforcement and monitoring of open access requirements in FP7 and make
practical suggestions with regards repositories.

Conclusions

The dissemination of research results in
FP7, including self-archiving and costs related to open access, is often an
underestimated aspect. It however requires specific measures and sustained
investment. Despite recognised benefits, the implementation of open access
remains a challenge. Open access also raises technical questions and legal
issues, linked in particular to how researchers exercise their copyright. Further
difficulties are the lack of awareness of researchers and of concrete support
for them to practice open access.

Annex 4:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Open Access

1. Does Open Access mean access to
knowledge at no cost to the user?

Yes, Open
Access (OA) scientific information is openly accessible at no cost, over the Internet,
for the user/reader. Publically funded research has already been paid for by
the tax payer and access to it should not result in further costs.

2. Does Open Access only refer to
publications?

Open Access can refer to any form of
scientific information, whether publications or data. However, the FP7 Open
Access Pilot focuses on peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.

3. Does Open Access interfere with the
commercial exploitation of research results, e.g. through patents?

No, the
decision whether to commercially exploit results, through patents or otherwise,
is made before the decision to publish (open access or otherwise).

4. Are OA publications of lower quality?

No, they go
through the same peer review process as other publications.

5. Is an OA requirement an obligation to
publish?

No, it is up
to researchers whether they want to publish their research or not.

6. Does this mean more bureaucracy and
protracted negotiations with publishers for researchers wishing to publish
their results?

No, in the
FP7 open access pilot scheme an OA toolkit, including a model agreement between
researchers and publishers, has been developed which is freely available.

8. How will publishers be able to recoup
their investments in the publishing process with OA procedures?

As concerns Gold OA, publishers will simply
be paid by the author (instead of the subscribers). The author will then be
able to claim back these costs (which range from a few hundred to several
thousand €) back from his/her institution or, in the case of FP7 projects, from
the European Commission. As concerns Green OA, articles will not be made
available in the repository for a certain time, the so called "embargo
period" (which typically ranges from 6-12 months, depending on the
scientific field). This allows the publisher to recoup their investment by
offering the publication for a fee during this time period.

7. Where can I find more information?

A variety of information on Open Access
background, the Open Access pilot in FP7 and relevant EC funded projects is
available at http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/
under the heading "Open Access" and on the website of the OpenAIRE
project at http://www.openaire.eu/en.
You can also contact the European Commission's Open Access team at RTD-OPEN-ACCESS@ec.europa.eu

Annex 5 – Key
indicators on OA publishing in MS

Member State || Existing funder mandates for OA publishing[198] || No. of OA journals in 2011[199] || No. of OA repositories[200] || Share of the EU public R&D expenditure[201] || Share of EU GDP[202]

|| || || || ||

Austria || 1 || 38 || 9 || 2.15% || 2.3%

Belgium || 1 || 23 || 29 || 2.27% || 2.8%

Bulgaria || None || 31 || 5 || 0.12% || 0.2%

Cyprus || None || 4 || 1 || 0.08% || 0.1%

Czech Republic || None || 54 || 6 || 0.91% || 1.2%

Denmark || 1 || 31 || 10 || 2.21% || 1.9%

Estonia || None || 20 || 5 || 0.11% || 0.1%

Finland || None[203] || 38 || 15 || 2.0% || 1.4%

France || 1 || 138 || 62 || 16.31% || 15.8%

Germany || 4 || 242 || 151 || 22.06% || 20.2%

Greece || none || 37 || 14 || 0.74% || 1.8%

Hungary || 1 || 20 || 11 || 0.50% || 0.7%

Ireland || 4 || 9 || 14 || 1.14% || 1.2%

Italy || 1 || 195 || 69 || 11.07% || 12.7%

Latvia || 1[204] || 2 || 3 || 0.07% || 0.1%

Lithuania || 1[205] || 24 || 3 || 0.09% || 0.2%

Luxembourg || None || 1 || -- || 0.19% || 0.3%

Malta || None || 2 || -- || 0.01% || 0.04%

Netherlands || None || 51 || 24 || 4.71% || 4.8%

Poland || None || 133 || 75 || 1.22% || 2.8%

Portugal || None || 57 || 40 || 1.36% || 1.4%

Romania || None || 217 || 1 || 0.62% || 1.0%

Slovak Republic || None || 26 || -- || 0.19% || 0.5%

Slovenia || 1 || 33 || 3 || 0.22% || 0.3%

Spain || 4 || 400 || 83 || 12.96% || 8.6%

Sweden || 5 || 51 || 45 || 2.96% || 2.8%

UK || 15 || 530 || 203 || 13.05% || 13.9%

Annex 6 - Glossary

||

Open Access (OA) || The policy and practice of granting immediate and free internet access to scientific results (including peer-reviewed journal articles); for some it includes also the right to use and re-use the information contained (conditions such as a request to provide attribution can apply)

Green Open Access || The practice of self-archiving some version of an article either on the author's website or (preferably) in a repository. Ideally the final publishers version is archived, i.e. the version that has been peer-reviewed and edited with citable page numbering.

Gold Open Access || The costs/fees of publishing in a journal or of a monograph for making it openly accessible are covered by authors (or the institution they are affiliated to) instead of readers paying via subscriptions.

Repository || Online database run either by an institution for research of all affiliated staff or across institutions on a subject basis in view of granting access to the publications.

Science, technical and medical publishing (STM) || Term used to refer to an important segment of scientific publishing, covering natural science, technical and engineering studies and medical studies; used in order to show the commonalities in the concern across those disciplines

Impact factor || A traditional metric indicator for scholarly journal quality, along with citation counts

Big deal || Sales practice of commercial publishers to offer big bundles of print and electronic publications to libraries at sometimes considerably reduced prices; usually does not leave libraries the choice for individual cancellations;

(Funder/institutional) mandate || Relates to the policy and practice of funding institutions giving research grants or of academic institutions to request the research output to be made openly accessible

Serials crisis || Describes the phenomenon that prices for scientific journals have been rising far above inflation levels for many years

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) || A character string (a "digital identifier") used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document on the Internet; is part of the document metadata; helps to retrieve exactly the version of a document

Embargo period || Period within which an article published in a commercial journal may not be made openly accessible due to request by publisher

Peer review || Involves the systematic, critical review of a submitted scientific article by two or more fellow scholars of the same scientific discipline as the author. These "peers" are selected by the journal editor and are requested to assess the scientific article in respect of its originality, methodological soundness, the significance and strength of its conclusions.

Article processing charges (APC) || The fee charged by publishers to offset the costs of publishing a journal article, where those costs are not covered by a subscription model

||

Harvester || Computer software technique of extracting information from websites

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI –PMH protocol) || A protocol developed by the Open Archives Initiative. It is used to harvest (or collect) the metadata descriptions of the records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives.

Hybrid journal || Journal publishing articles under the Gold Open Access model and articles requiring a subscription

Born-digital content || Content which is created (and published) in digital format only.

||

Publicly funded research || Publicly funded research refers to research undertaken by the government itself, or through grants to academic and other researchers outside the government

||

[1]               http://europa.eu/press\_room/pdf/complet\_en\_barroso\_\_\_007\_-\_europe\_2020\_-\_en\_version.pdf

[2]               COM(2007)
56 final of 14.04.2007

[3]               Council
conclusions of 22 November 2007 on scientific information in the digital age:
access, dissemination and preservation, available at http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/activities/digital\_libraries/doc/scientific\_information/council\_conclusions\_nov2007.pdf

[4]               http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/innovation-union-communication\_en.pdf

[5]               http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0245:FIN:EN:PDF

[6]               http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/opendata2012/open\_data\_communication/en.pdf

[7]               http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/index\_en.htm

[8]               See
footnote 3 above

[9]               http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1300&lang=1

[10]             http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0808:FIN:en:PDF

[11]          http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/pdf/proposals/proposal\_for\_a\_regulation\_of\_the\_european\_parliament
\_and\_of\_the\_council\_laying\_down\_the\_rules\_for\_the\_participation\_and\_dissemination\_in\_horizon\_2020%20(2014-2020).pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none

[12]             Agenda
item 2011/INFSO+/031

[13]             http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research

[14]             See
for example: http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study\_en.pdf
and the footnotes below

[15]             http://www.publishingresearch.net/projects.htm

[16]             http://project-soap.eu/

[17]             An
explanation of the different routes toward open access, in particular
"green" (self-archiving) or "gold" (paid) OA is provided in
Annex 1.

[18]             http://www.peerproject.eu/

[19]             www.openaire.eu

[20]             http://www.openaire.eu/fr/component/openaire/statspublications/default/539

[21]             "Riding
the wave": http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/newsroom/cf/itemlongdetail.cfm?item\_id=6204

[22]             Reports
from these workshops can be found here:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1301&lang=1

[23]             http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/planned\_ia/roadmaps\_2011\_en.htm#INFSO

[24]             http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/activities/digital\_libraries/scientific/public\_hearings/index\_en.htm

[25]             The
final analysis is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document\_library/pdf\_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age\_en.pdf

[26]             Preliminary
report available at http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/era-summary-report-2012\_en.pdf

[27]             http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/opendata2012/reports/Vickery.docx

[28]             http://www.fi.dk/publikationer/2011/adgang-til-forskningsresultater-og-teknisk-information-i-danmark

[29]             http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics\_explained/index.php/R\_%26\_D\_expenditure

[30]             http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics\_explained/index.php/R\_%26\_D\_expenditure

[31]             http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics\_explained/index.php/R\_%26\_D\_expenditure

[32]             Publicly
funded research refers to research undertaken by the government itself, or
through grants to academic and other researchers outside the government.

[33]             www.stm-assoc.org/2009\_10\_13\_MWC\_STM\_Report.pdf

[34]             This
figure should, however, be interpreted with caution as it does not include
non-English language journals in the social sciences, humanities and arts

[35]             Source:
The Economist "Academic Publishing: Of Goats And Headaches - One of the
best media businesses is also one of the most resented", 26.05.2011

[36]             Earnings
Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization

[37]             http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/OUP\_Annual\_Report\_2010-11.pdf

[38]             www.stm-assoc.org/2009\_10\_13\_MWC\_STM\_Report.pdf

[39]             www.peerproject.eu

[40]             http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/Final\_revision\_-\_behavioural\_baseline\_report\_-\_20\_01\_10.pdf,
p. 90.
and final report:
http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER\_D4\_final\_report\_29SEPT11.pdf,
p. 25.

[41]             See
for example the response from Blackwell Publishing Ltd. to the House of Commons
Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications, p. 2,
available at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/docs/House\_commons.doc

[42]             See
footnote 28.

[43]             http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessResearchReport.pdf;
further, if only anecdotal, evidence is contained in the JISC study on
'Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and
Scholarly Research', available at:
http://open-access.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OAIG\_Benefits\_OA\_PrivateSector.pdf

[44]             http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessResearchReport.pdf

[45]             http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlstat09.pdf

[46]             http://www.sennoma.net/main/archives/2009/04/scholarly\_journals\_vs\_total\_se.php

[47]             See
Annex I.

[48]             http://allenpress.com/system/files/pdfs/library/ap\_journal\_pricing\_study\_2010.pdf

[49]             See
for example the response from Blackwell Publishing Ltd. to the House of Commons
Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications, p. 2,
available at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/docs/House\_commons.doc

[50]             COM(2011)
851final of 6.12.2011, p. 11.

[51]             For
more details on these models, please see the Annex 1.

[52]             See p. 69 in Annex I

[53]             E.g. Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft: http://www.dfg.de/download/programme/wissenschaftliche\_literaturversorgung\_informationssysteme/mittelverwendung/2\_12/2\_12.pdf;
proposed revised OA policy of the Research Councils UK: http://www.openscholarship.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-03/rcuk\_proposed\_policy\_on\_access\_to\_research\_outputs.pdf.

[54]             In the FP7 OA pilot:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1300&lang=1

[55]             E.g. Austrian Science Fund:
http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/public\_relations/oai/index.html

[56]             http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011273

[57]             ISI
index refers to the Thompson Reuters indexed Journals which allows researchers
to identify which articles have been cited most frequently, and who has cited
them

[58]             http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961

[59]             http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011273

[60]             http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[61]             In
an informal exchange with the authors.

[62]             12,
000 articles published in 2011 alone.

[63]             http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[64]             http://project-soap.eu/

[65]             www.plos.org

[66]             See
'Mathematicians Organize Boycott of Publishers', NYT online edition of 13
February, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevier-journal-publisher.html;
this boycott action was a reaction to the introduction of the 'Research Works
Act' into the US Congress in 2011, a bill that is considered to be sponsored by
major commercial publishers; the developments in the US will be dealt with on
page 37.

[67]             Knowledge
Exchange Report 'IPR Policy and Scientific Research", available at:
http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=516

[68]             http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/opendata2012/open\_data\_communication/en.pdf

[69]             Final
report of the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data, October 2010.

[70]             www.parse-insight.eu

[71]             http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue60/beagrie-et-al/

[72]             Report
'To share or not to share: Publication and Quality Assurance of Research Data
Outputs' commissioned by the UK Research Information Network, available at: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16742/1/Published\_report\_-\_main\_-\_final.pdf;
see also the findings of the report 'Insight into digital preservation of
research output in Europe' prepared by the PARSE Insight project, available at:
http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-6\_InsightReport.pdf.

[73]             http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.org/index.php/current-projects/ode/

[74]             http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/e-infrastructure/docs/hlg-sdi-report.pdf

[75]             Essentially
the sui generis copyright protection offered by the Database Directive
(Directive 96/9/EC) and data protection issues (Directives 95/46/EC and
2002/58/EC)

[76]             http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-6\_InsightReport.pdf

[77]             http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-6\_InsightReport.pdf

[78]             See
section 2.2.1.

[79]             See
section 2.2.2.

[80]             A.
Swan, Open Access citation advantage. Studies and results to date, available
at: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/2/Citation\_advantage\_paper.pdf

[81]             See
discussion on page 14.

[82]             See
discussion on page 16.

[83]             http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document\_library/pdf\_06/open-access-report-2011\_en.pdf

[84]             http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-1387-innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf

[85]             www.openaire.eu

[86]             See
discussion on page 18.

[87]             Communication
by the Commission on the future of VAT, COM(2011) 851 final, p. 11.

[88]             COM(2011)
882 final of 12.12.2011

[89]             Proposal
for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down the
rules for the participation and dissemination in 'Horizon 2020 – the Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020)', COM(2011) 810 final of
30.11.2011.

[90]             http://www.openaire.eu/en/component/attachments/download/3

[91]             COM(2012)
xxx (forthcoming)

[92]             http://roarmap.eprints.org/

[93]             http://arxiv.org/

[94]             These
are the 'Fair Copyright in Research Works Act' of 2009 directed at prohibiting
any interference by research funding organisations with the transfer of
copyright from the author to publishers and the 'Federal Research Public Access
Act' introduced in 2006, in 2012 and again in 2012; this bill would generalise
the mandating policy of the NIH to all federally-funded research.

[95]             The
act has sparked a boycott movement (see references on page 21) among scientist
as it became apparent that the bill has been sponsored by major commercial
publishers; on this see the position of the American Association of Publishers:
http://publishers.org/researchworksFAQ/

[96]             http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2012/March/research-works-act-dead-open-access-NIH.asp

[97]             As
foreseen by sec. 103 of the America COMPETES Act that asks the OSTP to
coordinate public access policies. The result of this work – which included a
stakeholder consultation – is not yet finished and no report made public.

[98]             STM
study, http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study\_en.pdf,
p. 64; a noteworthy project is the Scientific Electronic Library Online
(SciELO) in Brazil (www.scielo.org).

[99]             http://www.opendoar.org/onechart.php?cID=&ctID=&rtID=&clID=&lID=&potID=&rSoftWareName=&search=&gro
upby=c.cContinent&orderby=Tally%20DESC&charttype=pie&width=600&height=300&caption=Proportion%20of%20Repositories%20by%20Continent%20-%20Worldwide

[100]            Revised strategy on
UNESCO's contribution to the promotion of Open Access to scientific information
and research of 20 October 2011, available at:
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/images/GOAP/OAF2011/213342e.pdf

[101]            http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/9/61/38500813.pdf

[102]            Council conclusions
of 22 November 2007 on scientific information in the digital age: access,
dissemination and preservation, available at
http://ec.europa.eu/information\_society/activities/digital\_libraries/doc/scientific\_information/council\_conclusions\_nov2007.pdf

[103]            See
for example the PLoS peer review approach,
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2012/02/oa-interviews-michael-eisen-co-founder.html.

[104]            COM(2011)
851 final of 6.12.2011.

[105]            Please
see the table in the annex that shows the existence of repositories in most MS

[106]            The peer-review
process, for example, could disappear with the functionalities of social
networks and other user-feedback mechanisms; see the 'Use and Relevance of Web
2.0 Resources for Researchers' project (ongoing): http://www.merc.ac.uk/?q=RIN\_Web2.0\_Project;
see also the 'Social Media in the Research Workflow' report by CIBER, available
at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf.

[107]            This
will be done in relation to the outcome of process relating to the development
of a set of indicators to measure the growth of open access from 2000 onwards
within the ERA (a call for tender was launched recently); for further reference
see page 64.

[108]            See the report
'National Open Access and Preservation Policies', 2011, http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document\_library/pdf\_06/open-access-report-2011\_en.pdf;
a noteworthy example in terms of policy formulation is the Danish Open Access
strategy, available at: http://www.bibliotekogmedier.dk/fileadmin/publikationer/publikationer\_engelske/open\_access\_2010/pdf/Open\_Acces\_UK.pdf;

[109]            See
reference in footnote 113.

[110]            http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[111]            See
figure 8 in annex I.

[112]            See
figure 6 in annex I with reference to the study.

[113]            Houghton
and Sheehan, The Economic Impact of Enhanced Access to Research Findings, 2006,
available at: http://www.cfses.com/documents/wp23.pdf;
see Houghton, Open Access – What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the
United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark 2009, available at http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316;
Houghton/Sheehan, Economic implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing
Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, 2009, available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf.

[114]            see
Houghton and Sheehan, 2009; This methodology allows estimating the increase in
returns to R&D due to increases in accessibility and efficiency arising
from open access policies. This model provides estimates on total annual gains
resulting from one year's R&D expenditure. It gives separate estimates for
the (overall) Gross Domestic Expenditure and for public expenditure (government
and higher education expenditure) only.

[115]            Please
see the table in Annex 1 on p. 73 for details.

[116]            For
a structured response to the criticism in relation to Houghton/Sheehan,
Economic implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models, see:
Houghton/Oppenheim, Widening Access to research information: A response, 2010,
available at: http://www.cfses.com/EI-ASPM/Comments-on-Hall%28Houghton&Oppenheim%29.pdf.

[117]            See
above on the green and gold models.

[118]            One
such additional option are the so-called national licensing schemes, which is
some kind of 'big deal' negotiated at the national level by the government or a
central research funding organisation.

[119]            See
on China: http://english.cas.cn/Ne/CASE/201011/t20101104\_60928.shtml

[120]            Houghton/
Sheehan, Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded
Research Outputs, 2010, p. 8; available at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/vufrpaa.pdf

[121]            At
p. 66; study available at
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study\_en.pdf

[122]            Houghton, Open
Access – What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the United Kingdom,
Netherlands and Denmark, 2009, available at: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316;

[123]            See
the UK Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, published in December 2011,
available at: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-1387-innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf

[124]            Based
on the calculation by Robert Kiley from the UK Wellcome Trust in http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/key-questions-in-the-uks-shift-to-open-access-research.html:
120,000 articles published in the UK; the average article processing costs set
at € 1,925; the Gross UK R&D spending data taken from the Office for
National Statistics (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit1/gross-domestic-expenditure-on-research-and-development/2010/stb-gerd-2010.html):
€ 31.8bn.

[125]            On
the basis of 2008 figures: 469478 articles published (source: http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness-report/2011/data-and-statistics/key\_indicators\_summary\_table.xls)
at an average article processing costs set at € 1,925; total public EU
R&D spending of € 87275m (source as above)

[126]            Journals
that have both subscription-based and Gold OA content.

[127]            OUP
reduced its subscription fees depending on the uptake and income from Gold OA,
see:
http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com\_content&view=article&id=265&catid=79&Itemid=316

[128]            http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/442/2/Modelling\_scholarly\_communication\_report\_final1.pdf

[129]            Please
see reference in footnote 110.

[130]            See
table 6 in annex I.

[131]            www.stm-assoc.org/2011\_05\_30\_STM\_Mabe\_Statement\_Public\_Hearing\_Luxembourg.pdf;
see the examples given in the Annex.

[132]            http://www.fi.dk/publikationer/2011/adgang-til-forskningsresultater-og-teknisk-information-i-danmark

[133]            Houghton,
Open Access – What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the United
Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark, 2009, available at: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316,
at page III.

[134]            A.
Swan, 'Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: Costs and Benefits For
Universities', available at:
http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/442/2/Modelling\_scholarly\_communication\_report\_final1.pdf

[135]            http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com\_content&view=article&id=142&Itemid=264

[136]            Please
see the discussion on page 21

[137]            Other
disciplines that rely predominantly on self-archiving in repositories like
ArXiv apparently do not have a concern about the lack of reputation attached to
self-archiving.

[138]            http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/Self-archiving\_summary2.pdf

[139]            Elsevier
in a meeting with the authors reported that it conducts ongoing Green OA
publishing experiments in the Netherlands and in Brazil in the area of
biomedical journals in order to see impacts on journal subscriptions. No
conclusions could be drawn yet.

[140]            M.
Mabe and B. Kalumenos of the International Association of Scientific, Technical
and Medical Publishers speaking with the authors.

[141]            http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=ind1201&L=LIBLICENSE-L&F=&S=&P=64840

[142]            http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-two-scholarly-communication-in-crisis/

[143]            See
analysis on page 37.

[144]            http://www.fi.dk/publikationer/2011/adgang-til-forskningsresultater-og-teknisk-information-i-danmark

[145]            Heading
for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly
communications, 2011, available at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/heading-open-road-costs-and-benefits-transitions;
please see the Annex I for details.

[146]            The
numbers are to be read as meaning that the benefits outweigh the costs by the
factor mentioned.

[147]            Please
see annex I for details.

[148]            Please
see the table in Annex V.

[149]            Idem
at p. 13.

[150]            See
Annex V

[151]            See
footnote 129, at page 42.

[152]            http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-4\_SurveyReport\_final\_hq.pdf

[153]            See
the 'Brussels declaration' of the Association of Scientific, Technical &
Medical Publishers (stm), available at
http://www.stm-assoc.org/brussels-declaration/

[154]            http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/279/2/JISC\_data\_sharing\_finalreport.pdf

[155]            Spain,
Lithuania

[156]            http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2010/07/t20100729c.html

[157]            http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2010/07/t20100729c.html

[158]            http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:291163-2011:TEXT:EN:HTML&tabId=1#id11521708-II

[159]            www.stm-assoc.org/2009\_10\_13\_MWC\_STM\_Report.pdf

[160]            M.
Ware/ M. Mabe, The stm report – an overview of scientific and scholarly journal
publishing, September 2009, available at:
www.stm-assoc.org/2009\_10\_13\_MWC\_STM\_Report.pdf.

[161]            Source:
The Economist "Academic Publishing: Of Goats And Headaches - One of the
best media businesses is also one of the most resented", 26.05.2011

[162]            Earnings
Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization

[163]            http://www.brill.nl/files/brill.nl/press\_release\_brill\_annual\_results\_2011-final-eng.pdf

[164]            http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/OUP\_Annual\_Report\_2010-11.pdf

[165]            http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study\_en.pdf

[166]            Cummings
et al. (1992)

[167]            See
PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and
Repositories – Final Report, available at: http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER\_D4\_final\_report\_29SEPT11.pdf,
at pages 16 et seq.; this does not exclude that researchers use a pre-version
of the final article when writing a paper to see the papers relevance or use a
pre-version while the final version is in the publication process.

[168]            Some
accept the publication of an accepted or peer-reviewed version on the author's
webpage (not in a repository as this would make structured searches for the
version easily possible) in order to attract readers to the final published
version.

[169]            http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php?la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple;
it is important to highlight that the database records the publisher's default
policy and does not take into account specific arrangements by the publisher
for individual journals.

[170]            Orally
to the authors at a visit to Elsevier publishing.

[171]            http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[172]            http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/

[173]            http://roarmap.eprints.org/

[174]            Available
at: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/23080/10/COMPETES3-harnad.pdf

[175]            http://www.sparceurope.org/news/public-response-on-behalf-of-sparc-sparc-europe-and-coar-regarding-publishers-self-deposit-policies

[176]            http://www.kb.se/Docs/about/projects/openaccess/2011/StällningstagaElsevier%20ENG%20\_fin\_\_cs%20recs.pdf

[177]            Kim
J (2007). Motivating and Impeding Factors Affecting Faculty Contribution to In
Repositories. J. Digital Inf., 8(2).

[178]            http://www.peerproject.eu/

[179]            http://cogprints.org/4385/1/jisc2.pdf

[180]            http://www.leru.org/files/publications/LERU\_AP8\_Open\_Access.pdf

[181]            http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[182]            http://www.oacompact.org/compact

[183]            Available
at: http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/Open\_Access\_By\_Numbers.pdf.

[184]            Houghton
and Sheehan, The Economic Impact of Enhanced Access to Research Findings, 2006,
available at: http://www.cfses.com/documents/wp23.pdf;
see Houghton, Open Access – What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the
United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark 2009, available at http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316;
Houghton/Sheehan, Economic implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing
Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, 2009, available at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf

[185]            see
Houghton and Sheehan, 2009

[186]            Source:
Houghton, 2011, cited in: Vickery, Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and
related market developments, at p. 37, available at:
http://epsiplatform.eu/content/review-recent-psi-re-use-studies-published.

[187]            Heading
for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly
communications, 2011, available at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/heading-open-road-costs-and-benefits-transitions.

[188]            Swan,
A. (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date.
Technical Report , School of Electronics & Computer Science, University of
Southampton.

[189]            A.
Swan, Open Access citation advantage. Studies and results to date, available
at: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/2/Citation\_advantage\_paper.pdf

[190]            http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-6\_InsightReport.pdf

[191]            http://peprs.org/peprs/peprs.asp

[192]            http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/PARSE-Insight\_D3-6\_InsightReport.pdf

[193]            http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/e-infrastructure/docs/hlg-sdi-report.pdf,
p. 10.

[194]            http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2010/blueribbontaskforcefinalreport.aspx

[195]            http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness-report/2011/part\_1.pdf

[196]            http://www.openaire.eu/fr/component/openaire/statspublications/default/539

[197]            www.openaire.eu

[198]            According
to openaire.eu (retrieved on 20 Dec 2011).

[199]            According
to www.doaj.org (retrieved on 20 Dec 2011).

[200]            According
to www.opendoar.org (retrieved on 20 Dec 2011).

[201]            Based
on the total federal or central government budget appropriations or outlays on
R&D, excluding EU funding, as per 2008 (2007 for Greece and Portugal), as
reported in
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY\_OFFPUB/KS-32-10-225/EN/KS-32-10-225-EN.PDF.

[202]            Based
on Eurostat figures ' Gross domestic product at market prices' for 2010.

[203]            Mandate
under preparation (source: Responses to the ERAC questionnaire).

[204]            Mandate
in statutory law.

[205]            Mandate
in statutory law.

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