Increasing access to science results: Science Europe adopts principles
The major national research funding and performing organisations in Europe, members of the European umbrella organisation Science Europe, have agreed on a common set of principles that should guide the transition to Open Access to research publications.
Science Europe's 51 member organisations are committed to ensuring that results of publicly-funded research and innovation in Europe are available through an unrestricted online access system, and have identified a list of ten principles that will ensure consistency and coherence in their efforts towards Open Access.
Amongst other principles, Science Europe's members "advocate that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or made available or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository". They also "expect publishers to apply institutional, regional, or country-based reductions in journal subscriptions, in line with increases in contributions paid by author(s) or institution(s)"; hence discouraging situations where institutions pay twice for accessing scholarly articles (so-called "double-dipping").
Through its active membership in Science Europe, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has contributed to this position statement and is committed to its principles.