More research articles free to all

And now the European Research Council (ERC) has finalised and published its policy for access to publications arising from its funding: “The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.”

So more and more research findings are becoming freely available to all! With articles arising from the ERC and NIH mandates and 34 others around the world, we are finding that 2008 is a friend indeed of research and so of economies in the developing world. See list of policy statements from http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/.

And research scientists in the developing countries can play a major role in ensuring all publicly funded research output is publicly available for all by following the example of pioneering organisations [for example, in India (21 repositories), South Africa (11 repositories), Brazil (55 repositories), Mexico (8)] and demanding the establishment of repositories for their institutes/universities (free software, free support, low cost). See list of repositories around the world from http://roar.eprints.org/index.php/ and become part of this international development to increase the impact and use of your research.

To follow progress you can log onto Peter Suber’s invaluable Open Access News blog on http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html.