Commissioner for Research and Innovation Carlos Moades and Sander Dekker, the Dutch Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science have called for further steps to ensure open access to scientific journals and to curb the excessive costs of journal articles and subscriptions.
In a meeting on 12 October, Commissioner Moades stated “I believe that much efforts need to be done by the main publishers to adjust their business models to the realities of the 21st century” referring to global trends in open access in other areas.
The Dutch are quite advanced in the field of open access and have set ambitious targets nationally that 60% of research must be open access by 2019 and 100% by 2024.
This is highly relevant in the context of EU discussions on open access as the Netherlands will hold the Presidency of the European Council in 2016. The Presidency largely sets the agenda of the Council and any recommendations/conclusions by the Council is seen as “soft law” by the Member States and seen as “instructions from the top” by ministerial staff.
The Dutch government is already planning to host a conference on open access in 2016 and should this item appear on the Presidency agenda, it could mean easier access for researchers to scientific journals at lower cost.
The full press release can be found here.
