Eshan Maitra

“Knowledge should be free” – European leaders in science have finally taken this seriously and announce that all the European scientific papers will be made freely available to everyone by 2020. This will not only spread the light of science onto everyone but also will inspire through mobile accessibility. Even will greatly impact research supported by public and public-private funds, which is currentlythe biggest portion of the papers produced annually.Though the League of European Research Universities (LERU) noted this as “not an easy ambition”.
The goals of this initiative included three points, “Sharing Knowledge Freely”, “Open Access” and “Reusing Research Data”. This would totally transform the process of fulfilling all paper publishing formalities and reduce the time greatly. Also no more paid-for subscription model for any scientific journals. That way, there won’t be any case of advertisement or focusing on particular one. All of the journals will be equally displayed as in a library.
The decision came from the meeting of the Competitiveness Council last month. The Ministers of Science, Innovation, Trade and Industry were all present there. European Union member states were also in agreement. Specially regarding their commitment tohighly value the new open access (OA) target.If the 2020 target is met, all the knowledge and information produced by experts in physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, biology etc. will be open to any individuals in ways that previous generations could only dream about. European Science Chief Carlos Moedas calls it a “Life-Changing” move.
One of the longtime open access advocateStevanHarnad of the University of Québec in Canada said, “The means are still somewhat vague but the determination to reach the goal of having all scientific articles freely accessible by 2020 is welcome.”