10/30/2009
Right after international Open Access week and the launching of the Dutch Open Access website (www.openaccess.nl), a further milestone has been reached during the current Open Access Year coordinated by SURF. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has announced that it is in favour of Open Access. This was reported in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper for 27 October 2009.
According to the report: “The NWO wants scientific and scholarly publications to be freely accessible to everyone on the Internet. The organisation will provide five million euros to cover the cost of this kind of publication. This is a major policy shift for the NWO. Moreover, NWO chairman Jos Engelen has made an urgent appeal to leading scientists and scholars not to publish their articles in the established journals but to place them in an Internet journal.”
Paradigm shift
The NWO’s initiative was warmly greeted by SURF. SURF’s director Wim Liebrand had this to say: “For years now, we have been working closely with research universities, universities of applied sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and the NWO towards the best possible way of sharing research results, using the latest ICT technology. But it’s not just a matter of ICT. What’s involved is a major programme of change – you might even call it a real ‘paradigm shift’ – and that takes time. But right now in Open Access Year we have made an enormous step forwards, and it’s partly due to the decision taken by the NWO.”
Open Access Year 2009
With SURF acting as coordinator, the Dutch higher education sector has declared 2009 to be “Open Access Year”. This gives a further boost to Open Access to the results of scientific/scholarly and practice-based research. Collaborative efforts are being made throughout the year to formulate policy, develop and improve the knowledge infrastructure, create a clear legal framework, and provide information for all concerned.
See also:
• NRC article (in Dutch)
• Jos Engelen was interviewed by Dutch Radio (Radio 1) about Open Access (in Dutch).