The commission's move follows support from the UK government for a switch to open access and recent news that the European medicines regulator will open its data vaults to allow independent researchers to scrutinise results from drug companies' trials. [ID:nL6E8IDBC9] [ID:nL6E8IGEMK] [ID:nL5E8HIIY6] [ID:nL5E8H7910].
"The EU's decision to adopt a similar policy to that of the UK will mean that the transition time from subscription-based to open-access publishing will be substantially reduced," Professor Adam Tickell, who was involved in a recent UK government-commissioned report on the issue, told Reuters.
Tickell, of the University of Birmingham, predicted a rapid and substantial reduction in the cost of subscriptions, adding: "With the support of the EU, UK government and major charities, such as the Wellcome Trust, open access to research findings will soon be a reality."
Scientists funded by Horizon 2020 money will have two options. They will have to make their research immediately accessible with a payment to cover publication costs or they will have to put their work into a free repository no later than six months after publication in a subscription journal.
The commission has also called on EU member states to follow suit with their national science funding programmes.
A more tentative experiment that will allow free access to underlying data from experiments was also launched on Tuesday. It is aimed at making it easier for other scientists and business to build on the findings of taxpayer-funded research within the constraints of any commercial interests scientists may have or privacy issues within the data, particularly if personal details from human subjects are involved.
The best known example of the economic benefit of open access to research findings was the results from the project to decode human DNA in 2003.
The commission says that by 2010, an original research investment of about 3 billion euros in the genome project had generated 500 billion euros of economic activity.
Reed Elsevier was not available for comment. ($1 = 0.8170 euros)
(Editing by Erica Billingham)
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