Over 15,000 sign open-access petition

The petition urging the European Commission to support open access to its research output has attracted over 15,000 signatories in the first two weeks.

The petition is calling on the European Commission to mandate the publication of articles arising from EC-related funding after a given time period in open-access archives. It also asks the commission to explore a European-wide approach to policies and practices for the development of digital repositories.

According to statistics for the first 12,000 signatories, around 75 per cent of individuals signing the petition are from European Union countries. Around 45 per cent of the signatories are involved in life-sciences research, with the remainder fairly evenly spread between engineering, physical sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities and ‘multidisciplinary’.

The petition is being organised by SPARC Europe, the UK’s JISC, SURF of the Netherlands, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF).