
EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020 - emartinelli
http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020/
======
anonymousDan
Why on earth do people think this is to the detriment of publishers? This will
effectively just lock in their profits by forcing all eu grants to include the
cost of payments to publishers to make research papers open access. It just
means the taxpayer is now paying for open access instead of individuals having
to pay up themselves. Note I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and it is
possibly worth publicly subsidising this as an intermediate step, but it is
far from being one in the eye for publishers as other comments here seem to
think.

~~~
IanCal
It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract
from a paper, and makes things far more transparent.

It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.

~~~
p4bl0
> It does however provide a limit on how much money each publisher can extract
> from a paper.

Why should we accept publishers to decide on what this limit should be?
Currently it can be as high as $5000. For hosting a PDF. This is a total waste
of (mostly public) money.

> It also makes free or cheaper services more competitive.

No because as long as we permit to those publishers to exists and exercise
their copyrights on prestigious journal title, their is a big inertia that
incentivize researchers to publish with the publishers that hold the
prestigious journal.

That's why we also need to get rid of bibliometrics for evaluating researchers
for their career. Bibliometrics is the game of the publishers, and
coincidentally, the biggest bibliometrics tools are made and sold by…
publishers.

~~~
IanCal
> Why should we accept publishers to decide on what this limit should be?
> Currently it can be as high as $5000. For hosting a PDF. This is a total
> waste of (mostly public) money.

I'm not sure there's a good way of limiting how much companies are _allowed_
to charge for a service.

What the funding bodies can do, however, is limit the amount of money in a
grant that can be spent on publishing costs. That's far easier.

> No because as long as we permit to those publishers to exists and exercise
> their copyrights on prestigious journal title, their is a big inertia that
> incentivize researchers to publish with the publishers that hold the
> prestigious journal.

There is a big inertia, but currently the system makes big journals just as
financially attractive as small journals or free places to publish because
there's no upfront cost. If big journals cost a lot of money and small/free
journals don't, then there's actually a force pushing towards cheaper options.
It changes the customer to one that has more control (the funding body).

There are interesting initiatives like the Wellcome Trust's project:
[http://wellcomeopenresearch.org/](http://wellcomeopenresearch.org/)

I'm also not sure what you're suggesting with "exercise their copyrights on
prestigious journal title".

> Bibliometrics is the game of the publishers, and coincidentally, the biggest
> bibliometrics tools are made and sold by… publishers.

I think this comes from the fact that the metadata around publications is
unfortunately often not available in a decent form, and the people who
actually have the data that's necessary for analysing these kinds of things is
publishers, so anyone who wants to do certain types of analysis will benefit
from either being in or partnering with a publisher.

[disclaimer, working with article and grant data is what I do at Digital
Science]

~~~
p4bl0
> I'm not sure there's a good way of limiting how much companies are allowed
> to charge for a service.

That of course depends on one's subjective notion of "good". There are
multiple ways of doing it. I like the one you suggest if the amount we are
talking about is a round zero.

> I'm also not sure what you're suggesting with "exercise their copyrights on
> prestigious journal title".

If the members of a journal's scientific board decide they want to go full
_real_ open access (with no costs for readers nor authors), they have to
abandon to name of the journal and the associated impact factor and reputation
that they build together with their work over the years, because the publisher
owns the journal even though it is the board members who did all the work (as
part of their job as researchers, paid by the state or a uni for example, not
by the publisher).

That's one of the reseaons why the movement for open access and the movement
against the use of bibliometrics should unite.

Thanks for the disclaimer.

------
thr0waway1239
I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the
research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of
innovation. [1]

It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I
think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to
bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the
academic community embraces this with gusto. The parallel with OSS is
interesting - somewhat in the same spirit as the programming community
embraced open source, I think the benefit of open access is that the
researcher evaluates the tradeoff between 'capturing value' vs 'making a
difference', without worrying about the external factor of 'what does this
external entity, which provided very little in terms of constructive input
when the work was being done, allow me to do (with regards to publishing
openly)?'.

But then again, I could be completely wrong, especially in domains like the
physical sciences where I don't know how the incentives align. I hope it works
out well, and that soon this is the just the norm in all countries.

[1] [http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-
backla...](http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-
backlash.html)

~~~
a3_nm
> someone has to bear the cost of the review process

Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because
reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to
_organize_ the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that
process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).

~~~
thr0waway1239
The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which
publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not
just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the
credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which
basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were
simply a free for all.

To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting
quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community
as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty
of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself
to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications.

I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing
process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just
like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.

~~~
pzh
I think you'd be amazed how small most of the scientific communities in
certain areas of research are. If you have the names of a few well-known
researchers on the editorial board or in the list of reviewers of an open-
access/electronic journal, this will instanty establish its credentials and
authority. After all, researchers care mostly about the quality of the work
and the results, and not so much about the branding.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Has this not been true for a long time though? Why haven't new upstart
publishers thrown the larger ones out already?

~~~
pzh
To be honest, I don't really know why this hasn't picked up yet. Maybe the
scientific community is not very easy to get organized, as researchers are
pretty busy with research, teaching, writing grant proposals, serving on
committees, acting as reviewers, etc. There have been some attempts in CS with
various success, though.

Another factor may be that most research (at least in CS) gets presented at
conferences, gets published in conference proceedings first, and then journal
publications are mostly an afterthought, and in many cases are skipped
entirely. Organizing a conference with open-access proceedings may not be as
cheap and easy as setting up a web-site and getting a few well-known names to
serve as reviewers...

------
exceptione
Although I did not contribute to anything of this, it makes me a proud
European. :)

I wonder if the US will follow suits when/if this happens. Any thoughts?

\---

Edit: maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead
[[http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-
scientifi...](http://futurism.com/eu-announces-that-all-european-scientific-
articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020/)].

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from [http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-
announces-that-all-scient...](http://www.sciencealert.com/europe-announces-
that-all-scientific-articles-should-be-freely-accessible-by-2020), which
points to this.

~~~
iso-8859-1
maybe it would be better to link to the original source instead:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577](http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aag0577)

------
bobthechef
Because I don't generally believe altruism is a thing in politics, the
majority of the article is just fluff and smoke. Scientific literacy? What a
crock. Scientific papers aren't for boosting the kind of basic scientific
literacy the links to. They are generally written for an already literate
audience (putting aside the poor quality of a great deal of science and
scientific papers). The overriding pragmatic motive here is hinted at in the
following sentence:

"Ultimately, this decision comes as a result of a meeting by the
Competitiveness Council,which includes the ministers of Science, Innovation,
Trade, and Industry."

EU science, being what it is, needs to be more competitive. One way to become
competitive in the face American or even Japanese competition is to take the
open source/free software route and make research freely available. This makes
the research more accessible, unburdens relatively poor European universities
from having to pay expensive journal memberships, increases the ability of EU
institutions to collaborate, and allows the EU to attract collaborators from
abroad by removing financial thresholds. And because science in the US has
stronger ties to industry, it plays an important role in determining the
economic prowess of the US. Poor entrepreneurs can also benefit from the move.
The EU is likely aiming in a similar direction (though I personally know
members of European academia who dislike the collaboration between academia
and industry).

------
rerx
I wonder if this will mean that European scientist will only be allowed to
publish in open access journals or if it will be sufficient if copies of the
papers are made freely available. The APS, who publishes the Physical Review
journals which are some of the most important in physics, for instance already
allows authors and their employers to post their papers online free of charge
[[http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post](http://journals.aps.org/rmp/copyrightFAQ.html#post)].
In my field everybody already puts every paper onto the arxiv anyway, so open
access is almost a lived practice.

~~~
Const-me
IANAL, but to me, the wording “must be freely accessible to everyone” in the
press release means free copies should be OK. As long as those are exact and
complete copies.

------
pjc50
Note that the current publishing arrangements for "open access" can often
involve substantial fees paid by the authors to the publishers. Arxiv is
definitely an exception.

~~~
a3_nm
Precisely. European articles may be "free to read", but most of them will
probably not be free to publish.

For-profit publishers will probably appreciate this: it means that, while
European institutions will probably still pay subscription fees (to read
foreign research), they will now also have to pay extortionate open-access
fees when publishing. In addition to paying researchers to produce and peer-
review the research...

~~~
p4bl0
I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. What a3_nm says is very
important. There are multiple forms of open access, and the EU is being
lobbied by publishers to push for their idea of open access, sometimes called
"gold open access", in which the authors pay to publish.

This is a really bad model as it makes money part of an equation which should
only be governed by scientific concerns: should this paper be published or
not?

Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research but
they won't be able to publish their findings…

And even thought it kind of solve the problem of mass access to scientific
publications, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of public money is
going in the pockets of private academic publishers for no good reasons. With
this model, research is still paid for at least 3 times (for doing it,
reviewing it, and now publishing it instead of accessing it) by universities
and research institutions, while publishers are making an awful lot money for
hosting PDFs. This money which could be used to do more research, as only a
tiny part of it would be necessary to support the necessary arXiv-like
infrastructure.

~~~
IanCal
> Now, researchers is poor countries may be able to access existing research
> but they won't be able to publish their findings…

Well they definitely can publish, but they will have to pay a decent amount to
publish in a big journal. Grants will include money for this purpose.

edit - I'm not sure why this was downvoted. There are free places you can
publish work, and grants that require open access include money for publishing
costs, certainly the grants my wife has worked on included open access
publishing money.

~~~
p4bl0
>> researchers is poor countries

> they definitely can publish, but they will have to pay a decent amount to
> publish in a big journal

Yeah, okay.

This is exactly what I'm saying this system is wrong. The decision to publish
a given paper in a big, notorious journal should only be based on the
scientific qualities and contribution of the paper. Not on the money (grants
or not) that their authors have.

And by the way, grants, and generally speaking project-based funding, are not
a good way to distribute money for research. It is okay to fund big experiment
requiring a lot of money on project-based grants, but it is totally poisonous
to need grants for daily operations (paying people's salaries and publishing
being typical daily operations). Research can't work long term if even the
basic necessities for a lab to just exist depends on grant money attributed
with respect to current trends and other random factors.

------
pietro
The EU hasn't "announced" anything. There was a meeting between several
influential people connected to the EU, and they reached an informal agreement
on something related to freely accessible research. The "announcement" is
nothing but the minutes of that meeting.

------
daveguy
_Cough_ sci-hub _Cough_

Edit: a few of the links on the wiki page still link to it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-
Hub)

They also have a Facebook page and an onion route.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
I reckon the existence of scihub might have prompted this decision. In that
case, the project is a success.

------
couac
This was a big announcement, but there was no action defined at the time of
the announcement. I wrote about it several months ago, because I had many
questions following this news: [https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-
on-the-recent-...](https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/05/31/our-take-on-the-
recent-eu-announcement/).

------
d_theorist
Here is what was actually agreed:
[http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-IN...](http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9526-2016-INIT/en/pdf)
(PDF direct link)

The intention sounds good, but it seems like there is still a lot of detail to
be worked out.

------
tiatia
The EU announces? Didn't the EU announce that EU roaming should be free by
2017? Last thing I read that now this has a dozen limitations, including a
time limitation of 90days and only if the SIM has been used in the home
country for a while. Ok. Now lets see how this turns out.

------
kahrkunne
Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific
articles? I mean, as a scientist, this benefits me, but I can see why your
average Joe wouldn't be happy to pay taxes so he can read articles he can't
understand...

~~~
542458
That's a little elitist of you. There are lots of people outside academia who
can understand and benefit from academic publications.

Consider, for example, somebody thinking of creating a startup doing research
on what the bleeding edge of a field is. Or a former student considering re-
entering academic research checking up on how the field has progressed since
they left it. Or simply an independent researcher trying to understand if what
they've created is novel and publishable.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Not to mention the many average Joes who have already done some important work
by reading open access papers in fields simply because they suddenly find
causes to became motivated to go past the average Joe level.

[http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-
killer/](http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/)

~~~
thr0waway1239
Actually I misunderstood how the author of that blog read the papers necessary
to help his son (I read the story a while back).

Here is another link from his blog:
[http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/](http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/)

And under the section called "A regret: Not pushing for open-access" he says:

"My hope is that tenure will provide me opportunities to steadily shift
computer science and medicine toward high-quality, high-impact open access
venues.

The reason I feel especially ashamed over my behavior is that in the course of
my research for my son, I have used my privilege as an academic to punch
through paywalls with impunity to reach medical papers.

In a damning irony, even this paper is behind a paywall.

I realize that few patients or parents have the ability to do what I did, and
they never will, until all of academic medicine goes open access.

In computer science, academic paywalls stifle.

In medicine, academic paywalls kill."

I suppose the main point still stands.

------
d3ckard
Great change! Makes me proud of european institutions.

~~~
bobthechef
Really? That's all it takes? With all of the bungling in recent years, they
have a long way to go before "pride" and "European institutions" can appear in
the same sentence. You should also think through the full consequences of this
move. The idea of free papers is nice, but it's not a fairy tale victory of
good over evil. Also, political motives are worth considering. Science in the
EU, given what it is, may wish to become more competitive in the face of
American science and attract collaboration in more or less the same way open
source and free software has.

------
akerro
What if a paper was written by an international team with members from
US/Australia?

~~~
dogma1138
Same things that happens when you have to apply other EU regulations like the
"Right to be Forgotten".

What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU
repository/ies which will provide free access to research material.

Also it's important to note that only research which has been funded with
public funds is applicable for this and depending on under which "Open Access"
model they'll end up operating under there might be some additional
restrictions.

~~~
IanCal
> What most likely will happen is that there will be a geoblocked EU
> repository/ies which will provide free access to research material.

I'd be absolutely amazed if this happens.

The current common setups for funding bodies which already require open access
are:

1\. Can't go behind a paywall, so money is included in the grant for
publishing costs.

2\. Can go behind a paywall, but a copy must be made available somewhere else
(not as common).

I have no idea why they'd go about building a geoblocked repository, that
sounds expensive and I cannot see what problem it actually solves.

~~~
dogma1138
Well it's the question on who this "regulation" is going to target, if it is
going to target publishers then it makes sense for publishers that work within
the EU to simply allow Open Access from within the EU only, pretty much every
content delivery solution has geo-blocking built in, so publishers already
have this capability.

If it's going to target institutions/grant recipients then the only thing they
need to do is allocate funds to pay for Open Access which is a bit silly and
it doesn't solve the issue, if anything it can make it even worse because
publishers could then squeeze authors for even more money because now the
public is the one who pays the ransom.

------
lrmunoz
After the final recommendation the European Commission has proposed about the
abolition of roaming charges [1] I'm very skeptical about this type of
announcement. Still publishers won't probably be able to lobby as hard as
telcos though

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-
free...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/06/european-commission-free-roaming-
limits/)

------
r721
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787271)

------
stcredzero
Some studies have concluded that there is now more social mobility in Europe
than in the US. Now I see more and more "bellwether" laws and executive
actions coming from Europe first. Does this mean that the US, being at the top
of the hierarchy and in charge of the world's largest empire, has now ceded
innovation to the up and coming powers, much as Britain did to the United
States in the 19th and 20th century?

~~~
paulddraper
First in line to Disneyland, or first in line at the suicide booth?

Direction is as important as order, so a criticism of "not first" must be more
nuanced.

~~~
stcredzero
Please provide a quote and explain why you interpreted my comment as a
criticism? Once you do so, then explain why your interpretation is more
applicable than an interpretation as a non-criticism.

~~~
paulddraper
"the US has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers"

~~~
stcredzero
Please note that it was phrased as a question. So, apparently you _assumed_
that the question was rhetorical, and carried on in that vein, rather than
responding to a genuine question, even after a hint. Please feel free to go
back and re-read the question properly as simply a question.

------
peter303
Shift cost to author and grant agencies then. A couple of studies I have read
says it costs about $1500 to review edit and publish an article. In addition
several thousand dolars of volunteer time is provided by editors and
reviewers. If the subscribers wont be paying, then costs will shifted to the
author. Some free online journals already only charge the author.

~~~
yiyus
Do you have a link to those studies? I would really like to know where those
$1500 are being spent.

------
faragon
Why are not already free? Most EU scientific institutions take tons of public
money (even private scientific institutions).

~~~
JohnStrange
Because the journals held by a few global players (Elsevier, Springer, Oxford
Journals) are the most prestigious ones, and a researcher's career and funding
hinges almost solely on the number of his publications/year in prestigious
journals.

------
danjoc
Does this include data sets used for publication? If so, is there a specified
format for publishing data sets?

------
somid3
This is such an incredible feat that I just want to trow a note here so I can
reference in the future to show off. If the metric of global innovation has an
exponential power, this act alone will likely increase that power by 10%

------
snvzz
Why wait until 2020?

This should be effective today, while giving a few month grace period at most.

~~~
JohnStrange
And who protects the researchers?

The same people who demand this open access also advocate research evaluation
criteria that mostly count the number of publications in top journals owned by
Springer, Elsevier, etc.

------
EGreg
Does freely accessible mean copies can be hosted by anyone anywhere?

I would say that fingerprinting is still useful, to knowthat the original
information hasn't been tampered with.

Why do we need publishers again?

------
fithisux
The next step would be to make all drivers open source by 2020.

------
carapace
(Thin sans-serif body text means you hate your readers. Making it grey means
you _really_ hate them.)

------
quirkot
The demarcation problem just became the most important problem in publishing

------
MrForken
Hmm the word Should is an indicator of where this is going

------
MrForken
Notice the would Should in this headliner.

------
alekhkhanna
Wasn't this news 3 months back ?

------
yiyus
This will be probably be postponed to 2022. Then, in 2021, they will say that
papers will be free only for 90 days.

~~~
smhg
On what is this based?

You mean similar to the timing for the abolishment if roaming costs?

~~~
yiyus
Yep

------
aabbcc1241
can we just put every paper on github ?

------
mordae
JUST GIVE THE MONEY TO LIBRARIES!

------
pacificleo11
arron swartz was right

------
hackaflocka
Thank goodness for Europe.

------
dagurp
*European Union

~~~
billpg
Just wait till you see how many people use "America" when they mean "The
United States of America".

~~~
Practicality
Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent. That would be North
America or South America. (I suppose you could call the super continent just
"America" but most call it "The Americas" instead.)

Clearly the term "America" either disambiguates to a continent or a country,
and most assume the country.

"Europe," on the other hand, really is a continent, so the term has a
completely different meaning than the EU, although it would be reasonable for
the two to be synonymous eventually, they clearly are not currently.

Anyway, it seems reasonable to use the term America as shorthand, instead of
U.S.A., as it's pretty obvious what you mean.

~~~
kome
> Yes, but America is not a reference to a continent

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas)

"The Americas, also collectively called America"... In many languages America
is the continent.

~~~
Practicality
And while that is an option, like I mentioned, it's not the most common one.

The wikipedia link to _America_ , redirects to the United States of America:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America)

And in the description of the United States of America: The United States of
America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or _America_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)

Also see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_\(disambiguation\))

"America is a short-form name for the United States of America."

------
zakk
That's incredibly stupid. The publishing of scientific papers has a cost, in
terms of editorial service, proofreading, typesetting.

This cost will be paid by scientists, rather than by the readers. In other
words, the papers will be free to read, but won't be free to publish.

I know as a fact that smaller research groups struggle to pay current
publishing fees, and as a matter of fact the EU decision will increase them,
making the situation worse.

~~~
JohnStrange
Sorry, perhaps this differs from field to field but at least in mine what you
say is patently false.

Journals have no linguistic editing, no proofreading, and the typesetting is
outsourced to India - at least Springer does so, as I know from personal
interaction with the typesetters. Articles must be delivered more or less
camera-ready according to the journal style. Editorial boards and all editors,
as well as as reviewers work for free.

If you have a research group that actually pays for being published, then
that's called "grey literature" or even worse, just plain self-publication,
and it's worth nothing. It can even have a negative impact on your CV.

~~~
zakk
Your last sentence is completely false, at least as far as the physical
sciences are concerned.

The most prestigious journals have a publication fee. I know for sure that
Nature Communications has a pretty hefty fee, more than 5000$, google it. And,
trust me, publishing there has a pretty positive impact on your CV.

The same concept applies to all open-access journals, including the most
prestigious ones.

You may want to revise your definition of "grey literature".

~~~
JohnStrange
I'm in the humanities, where my last sentence was completely true.

The publication fee for Nature you mention is for open access, not for
publishing. Open access fees are very expensive everywhere.

And no, my definition of grey literature is completely fine. Don't come to my
university.

~~~
zakk
So don't assume that what applies to humanities applies to every research
field.

As you may or may not know, on Nature Communications (and on many other
journals of Nature Publishing Group) you can only publish open-access, so
that's effectively a fee you have to pay to publish on Nature Communications.

You pay, you get your paper published. You don't pay it, your paper is not
published.

As you see, your definition of grey literature includes one of the most
prestigious journals in the physical sciences. Time to revise it! Better late
than never!

> Don't come to my university.

If I do I hope that at least your colleagues will be able to see beyond their
nose, and will know that what's standard in humanities may not be standard in
other fields.

> Open access fees are very expensive everywhere.

Which is exactly my point. The EU announces that all papers will be free to
read, so open access? Someone must pay. The price will be paid by research
groups, smaller ones may not be able to sustain it.

------
denzell
Why? whats next? Free newspapers.. free travel.. let's close all businesses.

~~~
Practicality
I didn't down-vote you, because you ask a valid question.

However, free newspapers and travel sounds good to me.

If all/most resources were free it would then be just a matter of deciding
which were worth spending your time on.

There doesn't really seem to be much negative, other than current business
models fading away. However, I don't think most people would care much if all
businesses did close and were replaced with a different economic model. (Not
that I have one in mind, just that I don't think we need to be attached to the
current business model)

~~~
paulddraper
> just a matter of deciding which were worth spending your time on

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time)

:)

