Urgent call Dekker on Spinoza prize laureates

In his speech at the presentation of the Spinoza prizes, State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker called on the laureates to take a stand for the free access to academic articles.

“Thanks to expensively bought contracts which your libraries enter into with academic publishers, you are but a mouseclick away from any article whatsoever. But if you work outside the walls of a knowledge institute, you are confronted with a paywall. A patient with a rare form of cancer who would like to know more about the treatment of his disease, a teacher who would like to know more about the teaching of arithmetic, or a business starter who makes sound-reducing paint and is looking for substances which can heighten the effect, all these people are cut off from the research and knowledge you work so hard for,” said Dekker in the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.

“Help me to make your work accessible to everyone. By supporting the struggle of NWO and VNSU against the large publishers – they have already concluded agreements with several publishers which allow open access. Help by publishing your own articles in open access only, for by so doing, you will confer on these publications the same distinction as prestigious scientific journals are having now."

The complete text [in Dutch] can be found on Rijksoverheid.nl.