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"I’ve become so convinced of the responsibility we have to society that as the rector I intend obliging our researchers to circulate their articles publicly, for example no more than six months after publication." |
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"Open access to the published scientific literature is one of the most desirable goals of our current scientific enterprise. Since most science is supported by taxpayers it is unreasonable that they should not have immediate and free access to the results of that research." |
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Sir Richard J. Roberts
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Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine, 1993 Nobel laureates Richard Roberts, Martinus Veltman, Harold Varmus and the President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Frits van Oostrom, are among more than thirteen thousand researchers, administrators, managers and librarians from all over the world who since 17 January 2007 have signed an Internet petition organised by SURF (together with other organisations). The petition calls on the European Commission to guarantee that the results of publicly financed research are published free of charge via “open access” , allowing them to be fully available for consultation by anyone in the world. Richard J. Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Medicine, says: "Open access to the published scientific literature is one of the most desirable goals of our current scientific enterprise. Since most science is supported by taxpayers it is unreasonable that they should not have immediate and free access to the results of that research. Furthermore, for the research community the literature is our lifeblood. By impeding access through subscriptions and then fragmenting the literature among many different publishers, with no central source, we have allowed the commercial sector to impede progress. It is high time that we rethought the model and made sure that everyone had equal and unimpeded access to the whole literature.” Read more about the Open Access petition |
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