EC petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

As part of the continuing Knowledge Exchange effort to make scholarly and scientific content openly available on the Internet. The partner organisations were key players in launching a petition to the European Commission calling on it to support public access to research outputs shortly after their publication.
 
Open Access to EC funded research
Organised by the Knowledge Exchange and SPARC Europe, the petition urges the Commission to follow the lead of other research funding agencies in mandating the publication of articles arising from EC-related funding within a given time period using open access archives.
 
Digital repositories
The petition also calls on the Commission to explore a European-wide approach to policies and practices surrounding the development of digital repositories as a means of making more visible the fruits of European research and maximising the return on public investment in research.

Petition signed by over 20,000
Over 20,000 individuals and institutions have signed the petition for the European Commission concerning open access. On 15 February 2007, the petition was presented to Janez Potocnik, the EU commissioner for Science and Research.

Petition signatories and statistics
Read more about the petition at www.ec-petition.eu where you can see who has signed, read the statistics and sign the petition yourself.
 
News about the open access petition
A news article about the petition has also appeared in The Guardian.

Flyer with more details about the petition
Download the petition flyer.