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The Myth of European Term Harmonisation 27 Public…

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The Myth of European Term Harmonisation: 27 Public Domains for the 27 Member States :

“The term of protection of copyright and related rights is generally considered to be one of the best harmonised areas of European copyright law. However, close examination of the EU Term Directive’s intricate provisions reveals a piecemeal and permissive approach to harmonisation which preserves many differences between the national rules. In this report, four main sources of legislative variability are identified and analysed: a) contagion from unharmonised areas of substantive copyright law; b) explicit exceptions to the harmonisation of the term of protection; c) national related rights of unharmonised term; and d) incorrect implementation of the provisions of the Term Directive into national law.

As a result, the desired harmonising effect has not been fully achieved: although a single rule may be applicable across the EU in theory, drastically divergent terms of protection may attach to the same information product depending on the jurisdiction within which protection is sought. In this way, the territorial nature of copyright undercuts harmonisation efforts, forcing the public domain to contract and expand according to divergent national rules. The result is a legislative framework that makes cross-border rights clearance calculation difficult, hampering end-users and cultural heritage organisations from taking full avail of the new opportunities now technically available for the digitisation and exploitation of the public domain. If the EU wishes to establish a truly harmonised term of protection for copyright and related rights, a more committed and comprehensive approach will be a necessary.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2145862

Survey on open access in FP7 Open…

Posté le 22 mars 2012 par Hans Dillaerts

Survey on open access in FP7 :

“Open access refers to the practice of granting free Internet access to research outputs. The principal objective of an open access policy in the seventh framework programme (FP7) is to provide researchers and other interested members of the public with improved online access to EU-funded research results. This is considered a way to improve the EU’s return on research and development investment.

The European Commission launched in August 2008 the open access pilot in FP7. It concerns all new projects from that date in seven FP7 research areas: energy, environment, health, information and communication technologies (cognitive systems, interaction, and robotics), research infrastructures (e-infrastructures), science in society (SiS) and socioeconomic sciences and humanities (SSH). Grant beneficiaries are expected to deposit peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their projects into an online repository and make their best efforts to ensure open access to those articles within a set period of time after publication.

In addition to the pilot, FP7 rules of participation also allow all projects to have open access fees eligible for reimbursement during the time of the grant agreement (1) (‘open access publishing’, also called ‘author pays’ fees).

In May 2011, the Commission identified the 811 projects designated at the time and sent a questionnaire to all project coordinators in order to collect feedback on their experiences of both the implementation of the pilot and the reimbursement of open access publishing costs. A total of 194 answers were received by the end of August 2011. They provide important input for the future of the open access policy and practices in Horizon 2020 (the future EU framework programme for research and innovation), and for the preparation of a communication from the Commission and a recommendation to Member States on scientific publications in the digital age.”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-open-access-in-fp7_en.pdf

Online survey on scientific information in the digital…

Posté le 31 janvier 2012 par Hans Dillaerts

Online survey on scientific information in the digital age :

“The public consultation ‘Online survey on scientific information in the digital age’ spurred great interest among different categories of stakeholders, with 1 140 responses received. The Commission received responses from 42 countries, including from all Member States except Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia, with 37 % of all responses submitted by German respondents.

Respondents were asked if there is no access problem to scientific publications in Europe: 84 % disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement. The high prices of journals/subscriptions (89 %) and limited library budgets (85 %) were signalled as the most important barriers to accessing scientific publications. More than 1 000 respondents (90 %) supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode. An even higher number of respondents (91 %) agreed or agreed strongly that OA increased access to and dissemination of scientific publications. Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways that public research policy should facilitate in order to increase the number and share of scientific publications available in OA. Respondents were asked, in the case of self-archiving (‘green OA’), what the desirable embargo period is (period of time during which publication is not yet open access): a six-month period was favoured by 56 % of respondents (although 25 % disagree with this option).

As for the question of access to research data, the vast majority of respondents (87 %) disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement that there is no access problem for research data in Europe. The barriers to access research data considered very important or important by respondents were: lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 %); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 %); and insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 %). There was strong support (90 % of responses) for research data that is publicly available and results
from public funding to be, as a matter of principle, available for reuse and free of charge on the Internet. Lower support (72 % of responses) was given for data resulting from partly publicly and partly privately funded research.

Responding to the question asking whether preservation of scientific information is at present sufficiently addressed, 64 % of the respondents disagreed or disagreed strongly. The main barriers signalled in this area were: uncertainty as to who is responsible for preserving scientific information (80 %); the quality and interoperability of repositories (78 %); and the lack of a harmonised approach to legal deposit (69 %).”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf

PEER Economics Research Final Report This study…

Posté le 20 janvier 2012 par Hans Dillaerts

PEER Economics Research – Final Report :

“This study considers the effect of large-scale deposit on scholarly research publication and dissemination (sharing of research outputs), beginning with the analysis of publishers and
institutions managing repositories and their sustainability. The study associates costs with specific activities, performed by key actors involved in research registration, certification, dissemination and digital management: authors, the scholarly community, editors, publishers, libraries, readers and funding agencies. Contrary to most of the existing literature, the study analyses cost structures of individual organizations. The focus of this study is therefore to provide context for the costs to specific organizations and to their choices in terms of scale and scope.”

URL : http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER_Economics_Report.pdf

La démocratisation de l’Union européenne et l’utilisation d’Internet dans la politique de communication de l’Union européenne

Posté le 7 janvier 2012 par Hans Dillaerts

Alors que les avancées institutionnelles de l’Union européenne se caractérisent par une démocratisation du système politique européen, il demeure que l’Union européenne fait face à un problème de légitimité populaire.

Ce manque de soutien populaire a été mis en avant comme résultant d’un ” déficit de communication ” des institutions européennes. Cette communication nous permettra de porter notre attention sur les principes organisationnels de la politique de communication de l’Union européenne en réalisant sa détermination collective et la marge de manœuvre limitée de la Commission européenne vis-à-vis de Etats membres pour ” communiquer l’Europe “.

Ainsi, face à la responsabilité de la Commission et à son incapacité de contraindre les Etats membres d’appliquer la politique de communication déterminée collectivement, nous réaliserons que l’utilisation d’Internet s’avère être l’utilisation d’un objet technique de communication pour essayer de communiquer directement avec les citoyens en dépassant les ” gate keepers ” que sont les Etats membres afin de renforcer le caractère démocratique de l’Union européenne.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00656332/fr/

National Open Access and Preservation Policies in Europe…

Posté le 15 décembre 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

National Open Access and Preservation Policies in Europe :

“The present report is the analysis of the answers to the questionnaire that the European Commission prepared on open access and preservation policies in Europe, with a view to taking stock in 2011 of the status of implementation of the 2007 Council conclusions on scientific information in the digital age.”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/open-access-report-2011_en.pdf