Image: Craig Nicholson for Research Professional News
Earma 2023: Directive needed to make open access the default, speaker suggests
The EU should consider using legislation to implement its nascent plans to make open access the default in academic publishing, an expert has said.
Daniel Spichtinger (pictured), a research consultant who formerly worked at the European Commission, told Research Professional News that it would be difficult to meet the EU ambition for all of its publicly funded research to become immediately available without action from the bloc that is legally binding on its member states.
The Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU member state governments has been drafting a stance on academic publishing for discussion and adoption later this year. The most recent draft called for immediate and unrestricted open access to become the “default mode” in academic publishing for research supported by public EU funds.
While open access is already well established in the EU’s own research-funding programme, Horizon Europe, it is still not the default at the national level in all EU member states. It remains to be seen whether national governments will back the presidency plan.
The draft “is definitely a good statement, but the question is how do you enforce that and how do you monitor compliance?” Spichtinger asked at the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators annual conference in Prague on 25 April.
“If you make a statement like this, it would imply that all the national funders would need to do it,” but there is “no legal force” behind the initiative, Spichtinger warned.
Most European research funding is provided at national level, pointed out Spichtinger, who is also a manager of grant services and policy at the Ludwig Boltzmann Society of Austrian research institutes.
He suggested that an EU directive would be a better way to go. Directives order member states to achieve an outcome, albeit without specific requirements for how to do it.
The EU tends to be reluctant to issue directives in research, Spichtinger acknowledged; instead it prefers voluntary initiatives that make objectives “difficult to enforce”.
But if the EU “really wants to drive” open science, he said, a directive would be a “good idea”.
Research Professional News is media partner for the Earma 2023 conference in Prague. Read all of the coverage here.