30/03/2021
cOAlition S – an international consortium of 26 research funding and performing organisations committed to making full and immediate Open Access a reality – enthusiastically welcomes the campaign by LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries, for the adoption of a law across all EU member states to ensure that all scientific publications arising from public funding are made open access at the time of publication.
The LIBER draft law complements the cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy and similar measures by Horizon Europe, stipulating that publications resulting from their funding must be made immediately open access, under a licence that permits unrestricted reuse, subject to the norms of academic attributions.
cOAlition S particularly welcomes LIBER’s goal of simplification by applying a “co-ordinated and horizontal approach” across member states that empowers authors to be in control of their own research outputs. Johan Rooryck, Executive Director of cOAlition S, commends: “The LIBER initiative shows that all academic stakeholders are quickly converging on the idea that authors should be in control of the dissemination and reuse of their peer-reviewed publications. Immediate access to research results is necessary to accelerate science, make it accessible to all citizens worldwide, and address the societal challenges before us”.