** Cross-Posted **

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:42:08 +0000
From: Leslie Carr <lac --- ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Reply-To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
    <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: The EC Petition and the EC Poll

The European research and academic community has demonstrated
overwhelming support for the European Commission's proposed Open
Access Self-Archiving Mandate (A1). A petition, launched jointly
on January 14th 2007 by research organisations in a number of
European countries, has drawn over 20,000 signatures from Europe
and worldwide in support of the EC's proposal. The response includes
almost 1,000 institutional signatories from National Academies of
Sciences, Universities, Rectors' conferences, Learned Societies,
national and private research funding councils, and industries that
apply research.)

In conjunction with the petition, a separate poll has been conducted
of the EC Open Access Mandate's specific target constituency. The
administrators of currently active EU FP6 projects were asked to
register a vote FOR or AGAINST open access to research results. The
result was overwhelming: 85.8% in favour of open access, 14.2%
against (based on a healthy 8.22% response rate from 2652 email
invitations to vote).

Previous research has demonstrated the increased impact that
Open Access to Research Results offers the research industry.
The petition and the poll demonstrate that Open Access now
receives broad-based and popular support as a mainstream
requirement of the European research industry.
---
Les Carr
University of Southampton