Scientific Publishing in Europe: Presentations from PEER End of Project Conference Available

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) end of project conference took place on Monday.
Presentations and videos from the conference are now online as well as this summary news release.

The PEER Project, held its final event to present its results on 29 May in Brussels. More than 100 attendees from the research, university, and STM publishing communities, as well as policy makers attended the conference. Comments by Vice President Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda) from the European Commission opened the meeting (full text of speech) available at  followed by an agenda reflecting the collaborative nature of the PEER project with results and perspectives from various stakeholders presented throughout the day.

A three page document with key findings is available.
The PEER final reports were released in January (Economics) and September 2011  (Behavioral) and are available online.
Finally, on the UCL Discovery Blog (University of London) Erica McLaren provides a summary of conference speeches and presentations.

These days, more than ever, efficient access to scientific information is a must, for all kinds of research and innovation. In particular, researchers, engineers, and small businesses need to access scientific results quickly and easily’.
Any delay ‘is bad for business: for small businesses, for example, it can mean two years’ extra delay before getting new products to market. So if we want to complete globally, that kind of access cannot be a luxury for Europe — it’s a must-have. That means we need more timely access to scientific articles in Europe. We need Open Access to scientific information’.
The Commissioner recognised the value in traditional publishing, but outlined the need for both sustainable business models and an increased endorsement of Open Access. Although Open Access has grown, only 20% of scientific articles are currently available on Open Access. Open Access is also a must for scientific data.

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