10 ms·

EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

1205 points by emartinelli 10y ago

akerro 10y ago
What if a paper was written by an international team with members from US/Australia?
- tingol 10y ago
  If they agree to EU funding they are subject to the rules imposed by it. At least that's what I hope will happen.
- yaantc 10y ago
  From the source on futurism.com: "This would legally only impact research supported by public and public-private funds". So if the team is funded partially by some European organization(s) it would apply to them, otherwise not.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Same things that happens when you have to apply other EU regulations like the "Right to be Forgotten". What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material. Also it's important to note that only research which has been funded with public funds is applicable for this and depending on under which "Open Access" model they'll end up operating under there might be some additional restrictions.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    > What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material. I'd be absolutely amazed if this happens. The current common setups for funding bodies which already require open access are: 1. Can't go behind a paywall, so money is included in the grant for publishing costs. 2. Can go behind a paywall, but a copy must be made available somewhere else (not as common). I have no idea why they'd go about building a geoblocked repository, that sounds expensive and I cannot see what problem it actually solves.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Well it's the question on who this "regulation" is going to target, if it is going to target publishers then it makes sense for publishers that work within the EU to simply allow Open Access from within the EU only, pretty much every content delivery solution has geo-blocking built in, so publishers already have this capability. If it's going to target institutions/grant recipients then the only thing they need to do is allocate funds to pay for Open Access which is a bit silly and it doesn't solve the issue, if anything it can make it even worse because publishers could then squeeze authors for even more money because now the public is the one who pays the ransom.
  - deleted 10y ago
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exceptione 10y ago
Although I did not contribute to anything of this, it makes me a proud European. :) I wonder if the US will follow suits when/if this happens. Any thoughts? --- Edit: maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead [http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020/ http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientifi...].
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-that-all-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020 http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-that-all-scient..., which points to this.
  - iso-8859-1 10y ago
    maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577
d_theorist 10y ago
Here is what was actually agreed: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-INIT/en/pdf http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-IN... (PDF direct link) The intention sounds good, but it seems like there is still a lot of detail to be worked out.
dagurp 10y ago
*European Union
- deleted 10y ago
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- billpg 10y ago
  Just wait till you see how many people use "America" when they mean "The United States of America".
  - Practicality 10y ago
    Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent. That would be North America or South America. (I suppose you could call the super continent just "America" but most call it "The Americas" instead.) Clearly the term "America" either disambiguates to a continent or a country, and most assume the country. "Europe," on the other hand, really is a continent, so the term has a completely different meaning than the EU, although it would be reasonable for the two to be synonymous eventually, they clearly are not currently. Anyway, it seems reasonable to use the term America as shorthand, instead of U.S.A., as it's pretty obvious what you mean.
    - kome 10y ago
      > Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas "The Americas, also collectively called America"... In many languages America is the continent.
      - Practicality 10y ago
        And while that is an option, like I mentioned, it's not the most common one. The wikipedia link to America, redirects to the United States of America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America And in the description of the United States of America: The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation) "America is a short-form name for the United States of America."
d3ckard 10y ago
Great change! Makes me proud of european institutions.
- bobthechef 10y ago
  Really? That's all it takes? With all of the bungling in recent years, they have a long way to go before "pride" and "European institutions" can appear in the same sentence. You should also think through the full consequences of this move. The idea of free papers is nice, but it's not a fairy tale victory of good over evil. Also, political motives are worth considering. Science in the EU, given what it is, may wish to become more competitive in the face of American science and attract collaboration in more or less the same way open source and free software has.
rerx 10y ago
I wonder if this will mean that European scientist will only be allowed to publish in open access journals or if it will be sufficient if copies of the papers are made freely available. The APS, who publishes the Physical Review journals which are some of the most important in physics, for instance already allows authors and their employers to post their papers online free of charge [http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post]. In my field everybody already puts every paper onto the arxiv anyway, so open access is almost a lived practice.
- Const-me 10y ago
  IANAL, but to me, the wording “must be freely accessible to everyone” in the press release means free copies should be OK. As long as those are exact and complete copies.
wahsd 10y ago
So who funds this free research that the papers are based on? The answer in Europe is clear, the common citizens, who's pay is taxed around 50% and who pay massive sales taxes while having zero say in who gets research funds and for what. But what about the parts of the world that don't believe in nepotistic systems or corruption and academic cronyism or are at least trying to fight it? I work with many academics in many fields, I can tell you that outside of the "hardest" sciences, and then only from some select institutions, is even remotely valid, let alone accurate or precise. How many more investigations do we need to reveal that way more "research" than not (even though it should be the minority) does not abide by even the most basic scientific principles.
deleted 10y ago
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thr0waway1239 10y ago
I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1] It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community embraces this with gusto. The parallel with OSS is interesting - somewhat in the same spirit as the programming community embraced open source, I think the benefit of open access is that the researcher evaluates the tradeoff between 'capturing value' vs 'making a difference', without worrying about the external factor of 'what does this external entity, which provided very little in terms of constructive input when the work was being done, allow me to do (with regards to publishing openly)?'. But then again, I could be completely wrong, especially in domains like the physical sciences where I don't know how the incentives align. I hope it works out well, and that soon this is the just the norm in all countries. [1] http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backlash.html http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backla...
- a3_nm 10y ago
  > someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).
  - thr0waway1239 10y ago
    The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all. To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications. I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.
pjc50 10y ago
Note that the current publishing arrangements for "open access" can often involve substantial fees paid by the authors to the publishers. Arxiv is definitely an exception.
- a3_nm 10y ago
  Precisely. European articles may be "free to read", but most of them will probably not be free to publish. For-profit publishers will probably appreciate this: it means that, while European institutions will probably still pay subscription fees (to read foreign research), they will now also have to pay extortionate open-access fees when publishing. In addition to paying researchers to produce and peer-review the research...
  - p4bl0 10y ago
    I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. What a3_nm says is very important. There are multiple forms of open access, and the EU is being lobbied by publishers to push for their idea of open access, sometimes called "gold open access", in which the authors pay to publish. This is a really bad model as it makes money part of an equation which should only be governed by scientific concerns: should this paper be published or not? Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but they won't be able to publish their findings… And even thought it kind of solve the problem of mass access to scientific publications, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of public money is going in the pockets of private academic publishers for no good reasons. With this model, research is still paid for at least 3 times (for doing it, reviewing it, and now publishing it instead of accessing it) by universities and research institutions, while publishers are making an awful lot money for hosting PDFs. This money which could be used to do more research, as only a tiny part of it would be necessary to support the necessary arXiv-like infrastructure.
    - IanCal 10y ago
      > Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but they won't be able to publish their findings… Well they definitely can publish, but they will have to pay a decent amount to publish in a big journal. Grants will include money for this purpose. edit - I'm not sure why this was downvoted. There are free places you can publish work, and grants that require open access include money for publishing costs, certainly the grants my wife has worked on included open access publishing money.
pacificleo11 10y ago
arron swartz was right
anonymousDan 10y ago
Why on earth do people think this is to the detriment of publishers? This will effectively just lock in their profits by forcing all eu grants to include the cost of payments to publishers to make research papers open access. It just means the taxpayer is now paying for open access instead of individuals having to pay up themselves. Note I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and it is possibly worth publicly subsidising this as an intermediate step, but it is far from being one in the eye for publishers as other comments here seem to think.
- IanCal 10y ago
  It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract from a paper, and makes things far more transparent. It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - anonymousDan 10y ago
    Good point. However, at some point publishers are going to up their charges, e.g. because of inflation. How will the cost increases be negotiated? Between the funding bodies and publishers behind closed doors? Or will they be imposed unilaterally by publishers, forcing academics to limit their submissions to pay-for open-access journals? This will bring into conflict the need for academics to publish in top venues to ensure career progression and the budget limitations posed by finding bodies. I suppose this could give momentum to the move towards completely free open access journals, but I'm sceptical given the risks for academics in not publishing at top venues. And although they get a hard time, I do believe there are some costs involved in running a journal despite all the free work they currently get from scientists, so I'm not sure completely free journals are realistic either anyway. I'm not sure if there are any more details available yet, but I would worry about this turning into even more of a gravy train for publishers. I can't see for example the Dutch government being in any hurry to introduce any legislation that will threaten Elsevier's viability. Nonetheless it is still a positive step that scientific findings look like becoming more readily accessible for the general public.
couac 10y ago
This was a big announcement, but there was no action defined at the time of the announcement. I wrote about it several months ago, because I had many questions following this news: https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-recent-eu-announcement/ https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-recent-....
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peter303 10y ago
Shift cost to author and grant agencies then. A couple of studies I have read says it costs about $1500 to review edit and publish an article. In addition several thousand dolars of volunteer time is provided by editors and reviewers. If the subscribers wont be paying, then costs will shifted to the author. Some free online journals already only charge the author.
- yiyus 10y ago
  Do you have a link to those studies? I would really like to know where those $1500 are being spent.
hackaflocka 10y ago
Thank goodness for Europe.
denzell 10y ago
Why? whats next? Free newspapers.. free travel.. let's close all businesses.
- djhworld 10y ago
  The EU provides a lot of funding for science projects across the union, this funding comes from member states, who raise money through taxation. So in effect you have EU citizens paying for research to be done, but have to double-dip on the papers or artefacts that come out as a result of the research. This initiative is designed to make publicly funded research.....public, and not held behind a paywall provided by a private entity.
- Practicality 10y ago
  I didn't down-vote you, because you ask a valid question. However, free newspapers and travel sounds good to me. If all/most resources were free it would then be just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on. There doesn't really seem to be much negative, other than current business models fading away. However, I don't think most people would care much if all businesses did close and were replaced with a different economic model. (Not that I have one in mind, just that I don't think we need to be attached to the current business model)
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time :)
- deleted 10y ago
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jordyjordy 10y ago
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zakk 10y ago
That's incredibly stupid. The publishing of scientific papers has a cost, in terms of editorial service, proofreading, typesetting. This cost will be paid by scientists, rather than by the readers. In other words, the papers will be free to read, but won't be free to publish. I know as a fact that smaller research groups struggle to pay current publishing fees, and as a matter of fact the EU decision will increase them, making the situation worse.
- Faaak 10y ago
  Have you actually published an article ? Publishers now don't even do editorial service. They give you a template you must follow and the actual (free) reviewers tell you if you write good english or not.
  - zakk 10y ago
    I've published nine, the tenth is under review. Whenever I published an article most often I got my references corrected, some grammar errors where spotted during the publishing process (I am not a native English speaker), also my articles are professionally typeset. Maybe we work in different fields, don't assume your point of view automatically extends to every field of science.
- JohnStrange 10y ago
  Sorry, perhaps this differs from field to field but at least in mine what you say is patently false. Journals have no linguistic editing, no proofreading, and the typesetting is outsourced to India - at least Springer does so, as I know from personal interaction with the typesetters. Articles must be delivered more or less camera-ready according to the journal style. Editorial boards and all editors, as well as as reviewers work for free. If you have a research group that actually pays for being published, then that's called "grey literature" or even worse, just plain self-publication, and it's worth nothing. It can even have a negative impact on your CV.
  - zakk 10y ago
    Your last sentence is completely false, at least as far as the physical sciences are concerned. The most prestigious journals have a publication fee. I know for sure that Nature Communications has a pretty hefty fee, more than 5000$, google it. And, trust me, publishing there has a pretty positive impact on your CV. The same concept applies to all open-access journals, including the most prestigious ones. You may want to revise your definition of "grey literature".
yiyus 10y ago
This will be probably be postponed to 2022. Then, in 2021, they will say that papers will be free only for 90 days.
- smhg 10y ago
  On what is this based? You mean similar to the timing for the abolishment if roaming costs?
  - yiyus 10y ago
    Yep
bobthechef 10y ago
Because I don't generally believe altruism is a thing in politics, the majority of the article is just fluff and smoke. Scientific literacy? What a crock. Scientific papers aren't for boosting the kind of basic scientific literacy the links to. They are generally written for an already literate audience (putting aside the poor quality of a great deal of science and scientific papers). The overriding pragmatic motive here is hinted at in the following sentence: "Ultimately, this decision comes as a result of a meeting by the Competitiveness Council,which includes the ministers of Science, Innovation, Trade, and Industry." EU science, being what it is, needs to be more competitive. One way to become competitive in the face American or even Japanese competition is to take the open source/free software route and make research freely available. This makes the research more accessible, unburdens relatively poor European universities from having to pay expensive journal memberships, increases the ability of EU institutions to collaborate, and allows the EU to attract collaborators from abroad by removing financial thresholds. And because science in the US has stronger ties to industry, it plays an important role in determining the economic prowess of the US. Poor entrepreneurs can also benefit from the move. The EU is likely aiming in a similar direction (though I personally know members of European academia who dislike the collaboration between academia and industry).
r721 10y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271
kahrkunne 10y ago
Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles? I mean, as a scientist, this benefits me, but I can see why your average Joe wouldn't be happy to pay taxes so he can read articles he can't understand...
- 542458 10y ago
  That's a little elitist of you. There are lots of people outside academia who can understand and benefit from academic publications. Consider, for example, somebody thinking of creating a startup doing research on what the bleeding edge of a field is. Or a former student considering re-entering academic research checking up on how the field has progressed since they left it. Or simply an independent researcher trying to understand if what they've created is novel and publishable.
  - noobiemcfoob 10y ago
    That's a fair point, but it doesn't invalidate the parent's point. Ultimately, there will be far more laypeople who cannot understand the articles than budding, academically inclined entrepreneurs.
  - thr0waway1239 10y ago
    Not to mention the many average Joes who have already done some important work by reading open access papers in fields simply because they suddenly find causes to became motivated to go past the average Joe level. http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/ http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/
    - thr0waway1239 10y ago
      Actually I misunderstood how the author of that blog read the papers necessary to help his son (I read the story a while back). Here is another link from his blog: http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/ http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/ And under the section called "A regret: Not pushing for open-access" he says: "My hope is that tenure will provide me opportunities to steadily shift computer science and medicine toward high-quality, high-impact open access venues. The reason I feel especially ashamed over my behavior is that in the course of my research for my son, I have used my privilege as an academic to punch through paywalls with impunity to reach medical papers. In a damning irony, even this paper is behind a paywall. I realize that few patients or parents have the ability to do what I did, and they never will, until all of academic medicine goes open access. In computer science, academic paywalls stifle. In medicine, academic paywalls kill." I suppose the main point still stands.
danjoc 10y ago
Does this include data sets used for publication? If so, is there a specified format for publishing data sets?
MrForken 10y ago
Notice the would Should in this headliner.
MrForken 10y ago
Hmm the word Should is an indicator of where this is going
daveguy 10y ago
Cough sci-hub Cough Edit: a few of the links on the wiki page still link to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub They also have a Facebook page and an onion route.
- Retr0spectrum 10y ago
  I reckon the existence of scihub might have prompted this decision. In that case, the project is a success.
snvzz 10y ago
Why wait until 2020? This should be effective today, while giving a few month grace period at most.
- JohnStrange 10y ago
  And who protects the researchers? The same people who demand this open access also advocate research evaluation criteria that mostly count the number of publications in top journals owned by Springer, Elsevier, etc.
tiatia 10y ago
The EU announces? Didn't the EU announce that EU roaming should be free by 2017? Last thing I read that now this has a dozen limitations, including a time limitation of 90days and only if the SIM has been used in the home country for a while. Ok. Now lets see how this turns out.
mordae 10y ago
JUST GIVE THE MONEY TO LIBRARIES!
lrmunoz 10y ago
After the final recommendation the European Commission has proposed about the abolition of roaming charges [1] I'm very skeptical about this type of announcement. Still publishers won't probably be able to lobby as hard as telcos though [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free-roaming-limits/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free...
aabbcc1241 10y ago
can we just put every paper on github ?
quirkot 10y ago
The demarcation problem just became the most important problem in publishing
faragon 10y ago
Why are not already free? Most EU scientific institutions take tons of public money (even private scientific institutions).
- JohnStrange 10y ago
  Because the journals held by a few global players (Elsevier, Springer, Oxford Journals) are the most prestigious ones, and a researcher's career and funding hinges almost solely on the number of his publications/year in prestigious journals.
fithisux 10y ago
The next step would be to make all drivers open source by 2020.
stcredzero 10y ago
Some studies have concluded that there is now more social mobility in Europe than in the US. Now I see more and more "bellwether" laws and executive actions coming from Europe first. Does this mean that the US, being at the top of the hierarchy and in charge of the world's largest empire, has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers, much as Britain did to the United States in the 19th and 20th century?
- paulddraper 10y ago
  First in line to Disneyland, or first in line at the suicide booth? Direction is as important as order, so a criticism of "not first" must be more nuanced.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Please provide a quote and explain why you interpreted my comment as a criticism? Once you do so, then explain why your interpretation is more applicable than an interpretation as a non-criticism.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      "the US has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers"
      - stcredzero 10y ago
        Please note that it was phrased as a question. So, apparently you assumed that the question was rhetorical, and carried on in that vein, rather than responding to a genuine question, even after a hint. Please feel free to go back and re-read the question properly as simply a question.
- gogopuppygogo 10y ago
  The U.S. is heading in a direction that will cede control of ICANN. I can't imagine a more inept proposition...
EGreg 10y ago
Does freely accessible mean copies can be hosted by anyone anywhere? I would say that fingerprinting is still useful, to knowthat the original information hasn't been tampered with. Why do we need publishers again?
pietro 10y ago
The EU hasn't "announced" anything. There was a meeting between several influential people connected to the EU, and they reached an informal agreement on something related to freely accessible research. The "announcement" is nothing but the minutes of that meeting.
somid3 10y ago
This is such an incredible feat that I just want to trow a note here so I can reference in the future to show off. If the metric of global innovation has an exponential power, this act alone will likely increase that power by 10%
carapace 10y ago
(Thin sans-serif body text means you hate your readers. Making it grey means you really hate them.)
alekhkhanna 10y ago
Wasn't this news 3 months back ?

1205 points by emartinelli 10y ago

akerro 10y ago

What if a paper was written by an international team with members from US/Australia?

tingol 10y ago
If they agree to EU funding they are subject to the rules imposed by it. At least that's what I hope will happen.
yaantc 10y ago
From the source on futurism.com: "This would legally only impact research supported by public and public-private funds". So if the team is funded partially by some European organization(s) it would apply to them, otherwise not.
dogma1138 10y ago
Same things that happens when you have to apply other EU regulations like the "Right to be Forgotten". What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material. Also it's important to note that only research which has been funded with public funds is applicable for this and depending on under which "Open Access" model they'll end up operating under there might be some additional restrictions.
- IanCal 10y ago
  > What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU repository/ies which will provide free access to research material. I'd be absolutely amazed if this happens. The current common setups for funding bodies which already require open access are: 1. Can't go behind a paywall, so money is included in the grant for publishing costs. 2. Can go behind a paywall, but a copy must be made available somewhere else (not as common). I have no idea why they'd go about building a geoblocked repository, that sounds expensive and I cannot see what problem it actually solves.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Well it's the question on who this "regulation" is going to target, if it is going to target publishers then it makes sense for publishers that work within the EU to simply allow Open Access from within the EU only, pretty much every content delivery solution has geo-blocking built in, so publishers already have this capability. If it's going to target institutions/grant recipients then the only thing they need to do is allocate funds to pay for Open Access which is a bit silly and it doesn't solve the issue, if anything it can make it even worse because publishers could then squeeze authors for even more money because now the public is the one who pays the ransom.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

exceptione 10y ago

Although I did not contribute to anything of this, it makes me a proud European. :) I wonder if the US will follow suits when/if this happens. Any thoughts? --- Edit: maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead [http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020/ http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientifi...].

sctb 10y ago
Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-that-all-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020 http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-that-all-scient..., which points to this.
- iso-8859-1 10y ago
  maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577

d_theorist 10y ago

Here is what was actually agreed: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-INIT/en/pdf http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-IN... (PDF direct link) The intention sounds good, but it seems like there is still a lot of detail to be worked out.

dagurp 10y ago

*European Union

deleted 10y ago
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billpg 10y ago
Just wait till you see how many people use "America" when they mean "The United States of America".
- Practicality 10y ago
  Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent. That would be North America or South America. (I suppose you could call the super continent just "America" but most call it "The Americas" instead.) Clearly the term "America" either disambiguates to a continent or a country, and most assume the country. "Europe," on the other hand, really is a continent, so the term has a completely different meaning than the EU, although it would be reasonable for the two to be synonymous eventually, they clearly are not currently. Anyway, it seems reasonable to use the term America as shorthand, instead of U.S.A., as it's pretty obvious what you mean.
  - kome 10y ago
    > Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas "The Americas, also collectively called America"... In many languages America is the continent.
    - Practicality 10y ago
      And while that is an option, like I mentioned, it's not the most common one. The wikipedia link to America, redirects to the United States of America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America And in the description of the United States of America: The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation) "America is a short-form name for the United States of America."

d3ckard 10y ago

Great change! Makes me proud of european institutions.

bobthechef 10y ago
Really? That's all it takes? With all of the bungling in recent years, they have a long way to go before "pride" and "European institutions" can appear in the same sentence. You should also think through the full consequences of this move. The idea of free papers is nice, but it's not a fairy tale victory of good over evil. Also, political motives are worth considering. Science in the EU, given what it is, may wish to become more competitive in the face of American science and attract collaboration in more or less the same way open source and free software has.

rerx 10y ago

I wonder if this will mean that European scientist will only be allowed to publish in open access journals or if it will be sufficient if copies of the papers are made freely available. The APS, who publishes the Physical Review journals which are some of the most important in physics, for instance already allows authors and their employers to post their papers online free of charge [http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post]. In my field everybody already puts every paper onto the arxiv anyway, so open access is almost a lived practice.

Const-me 10y ago
IANAL, but to me, the wording “must be freely accessible to everyone” in the press release means free copies should be OK. As long as those are exact and complete copies.

wahsd 10y ago

So who funds this free research that the papers are based on? The answer in Europe is clear, the common citizens, who's pay is taxed around 50% and who pay massive sales taxes while having zero say in who gets research funds and for what. But what about the parts of the world that don't believe in nepotistic systems or corruption and academic cronyism or are at least trying to fight it? I work with many academics in many fields, I can tell you that outside of the "hardest" sciences, and then only from some select institutions, is even remotely valid, let alone accurate or precise. How many more investigations do we need to reveal that way more "research" than not (even though it should be the minority) does not abide by even the most basic scientific principles.

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thr0waway1239 10y ago

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1] It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community embraces this with gusto. The parallel with OSS is interesting - somewhat in the same spirit as the programming community embraced open source, I think the benefit of open access is that the researcher evaluates the tradeoff between 'capturing value' vs 'making a difference', without worrying about the external factor of 'what does this external entity, which provided very little in terms of constructive input when the work was being done, allow me to do (with regards to publishing openly)?'. But then again, I could be completely wrong, especially in domains like the physical sciences where I don't know how the incentives align. I hope it works out well, and that soon this is the just the norm in all countries. [1] http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backlash.html http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backla...

a3_nm 10y ago
> someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all. To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications. I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.

pjc50 10y ago

Note that the current publishing arrangements for "open access" can often involve substantial fees paid by the authors to the publishers. Arxiv is definitely an exception.

a3_nm 10y ago
Precisely. European articles may be "free to read", but most of them will probably not be free to publish. For-profit publishers will probably appreciate this: it means that, while European institutions will probably still pay subscription fees (to read foreign research), they will now also have to pay extortionate open-access fees when publishing. In addition to paying researchers to produce and peer-review the research...
- p4bl0 10y ago
  I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. What a3_nm says is very important. There are multiple forms of open access, and the EU is being lobbied by publishers to push for their idea of open access, sometimes called "gold open access", in which the authors pay to publish. This is a really bad model as it makes money part of an equation which should only be governed by scientific concerns: should this paper be published or not? Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but they won't be able to publish their findings… And even thought it kind of solve the problem of mass access to scientific publications, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of public money is going in the pockets of private academic publishers for no good reasons. With this model, research is still paid for at least 3 times (for doing it, reviewing it, and now publishing it instead of accessing it) by universities and research institutions, while publishers are making an awful lot money for hosting PDFs. This money which could be used to do more research, as only a tiny part of it would be necessary to support the necessary arXiv-like infrastructure.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    > Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but they won't be able to publish their findings… Well they definitely can publish, but they will have to pay a decent amount to publish in a big journal. Grants will include money for this purpose. edit - I'm not sure why this was downvoted. There are free places you can publish work, and grants that require open access include money for publishing costs, certainly the grants my wife has worked on included open access publishing money.

pacificleo11 10y ago

arron swartz was right

anonymousDan 10y ago

Why on earth do people think this is to the detriment of publishers? This will effectively just lock in their profits by forcing all eu grants to include the cost of payments to publishers to make research papers open access. It just means the taxpayer is now paying for open access instead of individuals having to pay up themselves. Note I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and it is possibly worth publicly subsidising this as an intermediate step, but it is far from being one in the eye for publishers as other comments here seem to think.

IanCal 10y ago
It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract from a paper, and makes things far more transparent. It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.
- deleted 10y ago
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- anonymousDan 10y ago
  Good point. However, at some point publishers are going to up their charges, e.g. because of inflation. How will the cost increases be negotiated? Between the funding bodies and publishers behind closed doors? Or will they be imposed unilaterally by publishers, forcing academics to limit their submissions to pay-for open-access journals? This will bring into conflict the need for academics to publish in top venues to ensure career progression and the budget limitations posed by finding bodies. I suppose this could give momentum to the move towards completely free open access journals, but I'm sceptical given the risks for academics in not publishing at top venues. And although they get a hard time, I do believe there are some costs involved in running a journal despite all the free work they currently get from scientists, so I'm not sure completely free journals are realistic either anyway. I'm not sure if there are any more details available yet, but I would worry about this turning into even more of a gravy train for publishers. I can't see for example the Dutch government being in any hurry to introduce any legislation that will threaten Elsevier's viability. Nonetheless it is still a positive step that scientific findings look like becoming more readily accessible for the general public.

couac 10y ago

This was a big announcement, but there was no action defined at the time of the announcement. I wrote about it several months ago, because I had many questions following this news: https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-recent-eu-announcement/ https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-recent-....

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peter303 10y ago

Shift cost to author and grant agencies then. A couple of studies I have read says it costs about $1500 to review edit and publish an article. In addition several thousand dolars of volunteer time is provided by editors and reviewers. If the subscribers wont be paying, then costs will shifted to the author. Some free online journals already only charge the author.

yiyus 10y ago
Do you have a link to those studies? I would really like to know where those $1500 are being spent.

hackaflocka 10y ago

Thank goodness for Europe.

denzell 10y ago

Why? whats next? Free newspapers.. free travel.. let's close all businesses.

djhworld 10y ago
The EU provides a lot of funding for science projects across the union, this funding comes from member states, who raise money through taxation. So in effect you have EU citizens paying for research to be done, but have to double-dip on the papers or artefacts that come out as a result of the research. This initiative is designed to make publicly funded research.....public, and not held behind a paywall provided by a private entity.
Practicality 10y ago
I didn't down-vote you, because you ask a valid question. However, free newspapers and travel sounds good to me. If all/most resources were free it would then be just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on. There doesn't really seem to be much negative, other than current business models fading away. However, I don't think most people would care much if all businesses did close and were replaced with a different economic model. (Not that I have one in mind, just that I don't think we need to be attached to the current business model)
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time :)
deleted 10y ago
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zakk 10y ago

That's incredibly stupid. The publishing of scientific papers has a cost, in terms of editorial service, proofreading, typesetting. This cost will be paid by scientists, rather than by the readers. In other words, the papers will be free to read, but won't be free to publish. I know as a fact that smaller research groups struggle to pay current publishing fees, and as a matter of fact the EU decision will increase them, making the situation worse.

Faaak 10y ago
Have you actually published an article ? Publishers now don't even do editorial service. They give you a template you must follow and the actual (free) reviewers tell you if you write good english or not.
- zakk 10y ago
  I've published nine, the tenth is under review. Whenever I published an article most often I got my references corrected, some grammar errors where spotted during the publishing process (I am not a native English speaker), also my articles are professionally typeset. Maybe we work in different fields, don't assume your point of view automatically extends to every field of science.
JohnStrange 10y ago
Sorry, perhaps this differs from field to field but at least in mine what you say is patently false. Journals have no linguistic editing, no proofreading, and the typesetting is outsourced to India - at least Springer does so, as I know from personal interaction with the typesetters. Articles must be delivered more or less camera-ready according to the journal style. Editorial boards and all editors, as well as as reviewers work for free. If you have a research group that actually pays for being published, then that's called "grey literature" or even worse, just plain self-publication, and it's worth nothing. It can even have a negative impact on your CV.
- zakk 10y ago
  Your last sentence is completely false, at least as far as the physical sciences are concerned. The most prestigious journals have a publication fee. I know for sure that Nature Communications has a pretty hefty fee, more than 5000$, google it. And, trust me, publishing there has a pretty positive impact on your CV. The same concept applies to all open-access journals, including the most prestigious ones. You may want to revise your definition of "grey literature".

yiyus 10y ago

This will be probably be postponed to 2022. Then, in 2021, they will say that papers will be free only for 90 days.

smhg 10y ago
On what is this based? You mean similar to the timing for the abolishment if roaming costs?
- yiyus 10y ago
  Yep

bobthechef 10y ago

Because I don't generally believe altruism is a thing in politics, the majority of the article is just fluff and smoke. Scientific literacy? What a crock. Scientific papers aren't for boosting the kind of basic scientific literacy the links to. They are generally written for an already literate audience (putting aside the poor quality of a great deal of science and scientific papers). The overriding pragmatic motive here is hinted at in the following sentence: "Ultimately, this decision comes as a result of a meeting by the Competitiveness Council,which includes the ministers of Science, Innovation, Trade, and Industry." EU science, being what it is, needs to be more competitive. One way to become competitive in the face American or even Japanese competition is to take the open source/free software route and make research freely available. This makes the research more accessible, unburdens relatively poor European universities from having to pay expensive journal memberships, increases the ability of EU institutions to collaborate, and allows the EU to attract collaborators from abroad by removing financial thresholds. And because science in the US has stronger ties to industry, it plays an important role in determining the economic prowess of the US. Poor entrepreneurs can also benefit from the move. The EU is likely aiming in a similar direction (though I personally know members of European academia who dislike the collaboration between academia and industry).

r721 10y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271

kahrkunne 10y ago

Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles? I mean, as a scientist, this benefits me, but I can see why your average Joe wouldn't be happy to pay taxes so he can read articles he can't understand...

542458 10y ago
That's a little elitist of you. There are lots of people outside academia who can understand and benefit from academic publications. Consider, for example, somebody thinking of creating a startup doing research on what the bleeding edge of a field is. Or a former student considering re-entering academic research checking up on how the field has progressed since they left it. Or simply an independent researcher trying to understand if what they've created is novel and publishable.
- noobiemcfoob 10y ago
  That's a fair point, but it doesn't invalidate the parent's point. Ultimately, there will be far more laypeople who cannot understand the articles than budding, academically inclined entrepreneurs.
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  Not to mention the many average Joes who have already done some important work by reading open access papers in fields simply because they suddenly find causes to became motivated to go past the average Joe level. http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/ http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/
  - thr0waway1239 10y ago
    Actually I misunderstood how the author of that blog read the papers necessary to help his son (I read the story a while back). Here is another link from his blog: http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/ http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/ And under the section called "A regret: Not pushing for open-access" he says: "My hope is that tenure will provide me opportunities to steadily shift computer science and medicine toward high-quality, high-impact open access venues. The reason I feel especially ashamed over my behavior is that in the course of my research for my son, I have used my privilege as an academic to punch through paywalls with impunity to reach medical papers. In a damning irony, even this paper is behind a paywall. I realize that few patients or parents have the ability to do what I did, and they never will, until all of academic medicine goes open access. In computer science, academic paywalls stifle. In medicine, academic paywalls kill." I suppose the main point still stands.

danjoc 10y ago

Does this include data sets used for publication? If so, is there a specified format for publishing data sets?

MrForken 10y ago

Notice the would Should in this headliner.

MrForken 10y ago

Hmm the word Should is an indicator of where this is going

daveguy 10y ago

Cough sci-hub Cough Edit: a few of the links on the wiki page still link to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub They also have a Facebook page and an onion route.

Retr0spectrum 10y ago
I reckon the existence of scihub might have prompted this decision. In that case, the project is a success.

snvzz 10y ago

Why wait until 2020? This should be effective today, while giving a few month grace period at most.

JohnStrange 10y ago
And who protects the researchers? The same people who demand this open access also advocate research evaluation criteria that mostly count the number of publications in top journals owned by Springer, Elsevier, etc.

tiatia 10y ago

The EU announces? Didn't the EU announce that EU roaming should be free by 2017? Last thing I read that now this has a dozen limitations, including a time limitation of 90days and only if the SIM has been used in the home country for a while. Ok. Now lets see how this turns out.

mordae 10y ago

JUST GIVE THE MONEY TO LIBRARIES!

lrmunoz 10y ago

After the final recommendation the European Commission has proposed about the abolition of roaming charges [1] I'm very skeptical about this type of announcement. Still publishers won't probably be able to lobby as hard as telcos though [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free-roaming-limits/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free...

aabbcc1241 10y ago

can we just put every paper on github ?

quirkot 10y ago

The demarcation problem just became the most important problem in publishing

faragon 10y ago

Why are not already free? Most EU scientific institutions take tons of public money (even private scientific institutions).

JohnStrange 10y ago
Because the journals held by a few global players (Elsevier, Springer, Oxford Journals) are the most prestigious ones, and a researcher's career and funding hinges almost solely on the number of his publications/year in prestigious journals.

fithisux 10y ago

The next step would be to make all drivers open source by 2020.

stcredzero 10y ago

Some studies have concluded that there is now more social mobility in Europe than in the US. Now I see more and more "bellwether" laws and executive actions coming from Europe first. Does this mean that the US, being at the top of the hierarchy and in charge of the world's largest empire, has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers, much as Britain did to the United States in the 19th and 20th century?

paulddraper 10y ago
First in line to Disneyland, or first in line at the suicide booth? Direction is as important as order, so a criticism of "not first" must be more nuanced.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Please provide a quote and explain why you interpreted my comment as a criticism? Once you do so, then explain why your interpretation is more applicable than an interpretation as a non-criticism.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    "the US has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers"
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Please note that it was phrased as a question. So, apparently you assumed that the question was rhetorical, and carried on in that vein, rather than responding to a genuine question, even after a hint. Please feel free to go back and re-read the question properly as simply a question.
gogopuppygogo 10y ago
The U.S. is heading in a direction that will cede control of ICANN. I can't imagine a more inept proposition...

EGreg 10y ago

Does freely accessible mean copies can be hosted by anyone anywhere? I would say that fingerprinting is still useful, to knowthat the original information hasn't been tampered with. Why do we need publishers again?

pietro 10y ago

The EU hasn't "announced" anything. There was a meeting between several influential people connected to the EU, and they reached an informal agreement on something related to freely accessible research. The "announcement" is nothing but the minutes of that meeting.

somid3 10y ago

This is such an incredible feat that I just want to trow a note here so I can reference in the future to show off. If the metric of global innovation has an exponential power, this act alone will likely increase that power by 10%

carapace 10y ago

(Thin sans-serif body text means you hate your readers. Making it grey means you really hate them.)

alekhkhanna 10y ago

Wasn't this news 3 months back ?