From: "[log in to unmask]"
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:19:05 +0000

Recommandations de la Commission européenne en matière d’Open Access :
premières observations du GFII

MODERATOR'S NOTE:  GFII, an association for the information industry
in France, has issued a press release commenting on European
Commission recommendations regarding open access.  The full press
release is in French only and may be found at:

http://www.gfii.fr/fr/presse/recommandations-de-la-commission-europeenne-en-matiere-d-open-access-premieres-observations-du-gfii

Here we append a rough-and-ready translation of the first paragraphs.
The document goes on with a list of issues that GFII believes should
be addressed in developing a French response to the EC
recommendations.

Ann Okerson, liblicense-l moderator

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Recommendations of the European Commission on Open Access -
initial observations from GFII
Press Release of Friday, January 11, 2013

11/01/2013 -- On 17 July 2012, the European Commission issued a
recommendation that the Member States to take the necessary steps to
deliver open access publications resulting from research funded with
public funds, as soon as possible, preferably immediately, and in any
event, no later than 6 to 12 months after publication according to the
disciplines.

The French authorities should therefore soon take a position on this
issue. It is in this context that the GFII, a multidisciplinary group
bringing together public and private sector actors involved in the
industry of information and knowledge, wishes to inform the public of
the first conclusions reached by the Working Group Open Access.

GFII shares the conviction that publications that are results of
research work should be disseminated as openly and as quickly as
possible, both in the interests of authors and in the interest of the
institutions to which they belong, in readers' interest and that of
society as a whole. But the group points out that publishing a
scientific text, whether in the humanities and social sciences (SHS)
or in scientific, technical and medical (STM), it is not the only
issue, especially in the digital environment. Editing scientific texts
requires they be selected, improved and their information validated
through regular communication with the authors, proofread, formatted,
printed if appropriate or provided "on-line" and indexed in a
sustainable manner on platforms with high added value, while enriching
metadata, developing tools to facilitate research through databases,
publicizing and promoting authors and their works, etc.. Many of these
activities and services to the scientific community have a cost and it
is therefore necessary the cost be met. The issue of Open Access is
therefore balancing the widest possible dissemination of publications
from the work of researchers and the existence of economic models for
real editing work and the promotion of scientific texts for all their
potential readers. Without a balance between these objectives, the
risk exists of severely destabilizing the scientific information
sector.

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