In May of this year, the Council of the European Union (EU) issued a non-binding recommendation that members of the EU create a nonprofit, open-access model for scholarly publishing of research involving public funds. The council explained this and associated initiatives in its press release, but generally under this model researchers would be able to publish their work without article processing fees, and readers would be able to read materials without paying a subscription or one-time article access charge.
This represents a significant shift by the EU to directly supporting infrastructure for nonprofit scholarly publishing. Like any form of publishing, open access publishing requires a platform to make materials accessible, and especially for new and smaller publishers this can represent a significant financial barrier. By creating a platform that is free to both publishers and readers, the EU will remove this obstacle to open access publishing.
In a reaction to the memo, Springer Nature published an article by Katherine Sanderson titled, “EU council’s ‘no pay’ publishing model draws mixed response” which generally focuses on potential problems with the platform should it be created. The concerns raised include the impact on the existing academic publishing industry and a lack of specific directions on how this will be done. Sanderson wrote that some research organizations have expressed strong support for the initiative, and that article processing charges can present their own problems for scholarly publishing.
Professor Peter Coles of Maynooth University offers a considerably more enthusiastic appraisal of the memo and platform, stressing that Open Access should be free to the user and researcher without article processing fees paid by their institution, and the platform would be a step forward. While Coles also mentions the need for links between repositories and to link them to mechanisms for peer review, his article is supportive.
The scholarly communication landscape continues to change, but if you have questions or would like to make your materials Open Access or more readily available it is often possible to place pre-prints or even published articles and other materials in our institutional repository ISUReD.
If you would like to discuss this further, please contact Milner Library’s Scholarly Communication Team at ISUReD@ilstu.edu.
