Report: “Dutch EU Presidency Aims at Open Access to Scientific Journals”

From Science Business:

The Netherlands will use the spotlight of the EU Council presidency to confront the inequity of scientific research publishing, Sander Dekker, Minister for Education, Culture and Science told the European Parliament on Tuesday, as he set out the priorities for R&D policy of the six month Dutch presidency.
“Europe really needs to catch up on open access,” Dekker said, promising political impetus on open access publishing, a model under which the author, not the reader, pays for publishing costs.
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Stephan Kuster, head of policy affairs at Science Europe, an association of 47 research funding and performing organisations, says the rhetoric is all there. “I think there’s a real chance of momentum building towards something concrete,” he said.
In addition to the UK and the Netherlands, Kuster expects leadership from Finland and Austria, which have also pledged free access to journals.
Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, spent much of the last year rallying support for open access.
“We will soon hand over almost 10,000 signatures from our open access campaign, and ask for an initiative by Moedas and Dekker to start a round table discussion which must lead – in let’s say 12 months’ time – to a number of breakthroughs in the open access debate,” Deketelaere said.

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UPDATE: Dutch Presidency priorities discussed in committee (via Europa.eu)

In a separate debate, the state secretary for education, culture and science, Sander Dekker, said the Dutch presidency would encourage member states to invest more in research and innovation, through a smart regulatory framework, made attractive to researchers with an “open science with open access” approach.

See Also: Dutch lead European push to flip journals to open access (via Nature)
See Also: Open journals that piggyback on arXiv gather momentum (via Nature)
See Also: Dutch Universities and Elsevier Reach Agreement in Principle on Open Access and Subscription (December 10, 2015)

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