may04b.indd


SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION 

The
view
from
Europe



Creating
international
change


by David Prosser 

S
cholarly communication has long been an international endeavour, and the prob­
lems facing it are international in scope. No 
country is immune from the information gap 
between what researchers need to access 
and what libraries can purchase (or, increas­
ingly, license). Similarly, any solutions to the 
problems (in particular the “serials crisis”) will 
need to be international. However, within this 
international environment there exist many 
regional variations. This is especially true of 
Europe. 

Europe as a whole rivals the United States 
in terms of research spending and number 
of papers published. It is home to many of 
the largest commercial publishers (Elsevier, 
Springer, Taylor & Francis, etc.) and the 
two largest university presses (Oxford and 
Cambridge). One area in which Europe 
does not rival the United States is in the 
size of its learned societies (and associated 
publishing programs). Traditionally, most 
European societies were national in reach 
and had few pan­European societies, with the 
result that the societies and their publishing 
programmes lack the scale of those in the 
United States. However, despite generally 
being smaller (both in terms of number of 
journals and papers published), there is a 

strong society publishing scene in Europe, 
particularly in the United Kingdom (with 
Blackwell as one of the largest publishers of 
society journals). 

As might be imagined, there are wide 
differences across Europe in the way both 
research universities and libraries are funded 
and organized. As a simple example, most 
libraries in U.K. research universities are 
centrally funded, while on continental Eu­
rope much more library funding comes from 
individual departments (and many universi­
ties continue to have strong departmental 
libraries). 

While the European Union is the major 
pan­European political entity, it does not 
have significant spending power in either 
primary research or library provision. Deci­
sions on these are made at the national level, 
which makes it difficult to get consensus on 
scholarly communication issues at a European 
level. Fortunately, consensus is not always 
needed to move forward. The following 
examples may illustrate this. 

The U.K. inquiry 
The first example is the U.K. House of 
Commons Science and Technology Com­
mittee Inquiry into Scientifi c Publications.1 

About the author 

David Prosser is director of SPARC Europe, e-mail: david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk 

© 2004 David Prosser 

C&RL News May 2004 / 265 

mailto:david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk


The committee is responsible for examining 
the expenditure and policy of a number of 
bodies, including the U.K. research funding 
bodies, and can make recommendations to 
government regarding these bodies. 

The inquiry was set up to look at 
“. . . access to journals within the scien­
tific community, with particular refer­
ence to price and availability” and to ask 
“. . . what measures are being taken in 
government, the publishing industry and 
academic institutions to ensure that research­
ers, teachers and students have access to the 
publications they need in order to carry out 
their work effectively.” 

The committee has accepted written 
evidence from a wide range of interested 
groups and is in the process of accepting oral 
evidence with a view to reporting at some 
point over the summer.  

SPARC Europe has suggested that the com­
mittee make three recommendations to the 
funding bodies. First, it should be a condi­
tion of grant that authors retain copyright in 
their papers. The transfer of copyright (or 
granting of exclusive and limiting licences) 
in research papers from the authors to the 
publishers gives control of access to the pa­
pers to the publishers and limits subsequent 
use of the papers. 

Second, authors should be required to 
deposit copies of their fi nal, peer­reviewed 
papers in suitable, fully searchable, freely 
accessible Internet repositories or archives. 
Finally, funds should be provided as part of 
research grants to allow payment of charges 
for publication in open access journals. 
There is great international interest in the 
committee’s inquiry and we could well see 
the report catalysing similar action in other 
countries (or at least other countries picking­
up the recommendations). 

The Berlin Declaration 
The second example relates to the interest 
of funding bodies in the issues surround­
ing scholarly communication. In October 
of last year the research funding bodies in 
Germany issued the Berlin Declaration.2 

Realizing that their “mission of disseminat­
ing knowledge is only half complete if the 
information is not made widely and read­
ily available to society,” the funding bodies 
have committed to supporting open access 

(both through self­archiving and open ac­
cess journals). The practical lead for this has 
come from Germany’s Max Planck Gesell­
schaft (the Max Planck Society), which has 
set up a repository and launched a number 
of open access journals. The declaration has 
now been signed by organizations outside 
of Germany, including funding bodies in 
France, Austria, Finland, and Greece. 

Both the declaration and the commons 
inquiry have initiated wide debate outside of 
Germany and the United Kingdom, amplify­
ing their effects and moving us forward more 
quickly than probably would have been the 
case if we had had to wait for pan­European 
agreement. 

Contributions of the Wellcome Trust 
When discussing the leadership of funding 
bodies, it is important to note the signifi cant 
contribution of the Wellcome Trust to the 
open access debate. The trust spent more 
than £500 million last year on research 
(mainly in the biomedical field and mainly 
in the United Kingdom) to “. . . foster and 
promote research with the aim of improv­
ing human and animal health.” Last year the 
trust issued a position statement strongly in 
support of open access, stating that it “. . . 
has a fundamental interest in ensuring that 
neither the terms struck with researchers, 
nor the marketing and distribution strategies 
used by publishers (whether commercial, 
not­for­profit or academic) adversely affect 
the availability and accessibility . . .” of pa­
pers reporting research funded by the trust. 
Specifically, the trust agreed to allow those 
funded by the trust to use grant monies to 
pay for publication charges in open access 
journals.3 

Growing support for open access strate­
gies 
These high­level initiatives are providing 
strong support for the two parallel and com­
plementary strategies for achieving open ac­
cess outlined in the Budapest Open Access 
Initiative (BOAI) of February 2002.4 BOAI 
succinctly formalized the twin approaches 
of author self­archiving in repositories and 
open­access journals that would place no 
subscription barriers between readers and 
the papers they were interested in. By pur­
suing these two strategies we can move 

266 / C&RL News May 2004 



towards a fairer, more equitable, and more 
efficient communications system. Action 
has been taken in Europe to follow both of 
these routes. 

One of the first software packages that 
enabled an institution to set up a repository 
to accept authors’ papers (among other schol­
arly material) was eprints.org (now renamed 
GNU EPrints) from Southampton in the 
United Kingdom. This open source software 
has now been used to set up more than 120 
archives worldwide. Other software packages 
developed include CDSware at CERN and 
ARNO in the Netherlands.5 

A number of large­scale projects exist 
within some European countries to encour­
age the development and use of institutional 
repositories. For example, the DARE project 
in The Netherlands aims to provide infrastruc­
ture and support for institutional repositories 
and has, impressively, ensured that all Dutch 
universities have working repositories. This is 
an example of where a relatively small size 
makes it easier for a country to implement 
national solutions. The SHERPA project is 
offering similar support to 20 of the most 
research­intensive universities in the United 
Kingdom.6 

The Directory of Open Access Journals 
Turning to open access journals, May 2003 
saw the launch of the Directory of Open Ac­
cess Journals (DOAJ) from Lund University 
in Sweden.7 This directory, which lists fully 
peer­reviewed open access journals, has 
performed an extremely valuable service 
in showing that it is possible to have high­
quality research published as open access. 
When first launched, DOAJ covered 375 
titles, a figure that has quickly risen to more 
than 775 journals in a wide range of subject 
areas (in both the science and humanities 
and social sciences). One feature of DOAJ 
is that records for each journal listed can be 
easily downloaded by librarians and entered 
into their catalogs, thereby allowing readers 
to learn about the journals. 

We are continuing to see both the launch 
of new journals that are “born” open access 
and existing subscription­based journals 
investigating how they may move to open 
access. In the first category, BioMedCentral 
continues to lead the way in terms of size, 
with more than 5,000 open access papers 

published in more than 100 journals.8 The 
second category sees a growing number of 
publishers (especially society publishers) at­
tempting to make the transition. 

One model, promoted by SPARC Europe, 
is to offer authors a choice as to whether 
they are willing and able to pay a publication 
charge.9 If they are (and, of course, the paper 
is judged acceptable for publication following 
peer­review), the paper is made open access 
on publication. If they are unwilling or un­
able to pay, the paper is only made available 
to subscribers. Over time, the proportion of 
authors willing to pay should increase, and 
the publisher can begin to reduce the sub­
scription price. Eventually, the entire journal 
will become open access. 

While not eliminating financial risk for 
the journal owner, this model should reduce 
the risk by providing a smooth transition 
period as the decline in subscription revenue 
is matched to the increase in publication 
revenue. In the United Kingdom, we have 
already seen Oxford University Press, the 
Company of Biologists, and the Society of 
Experimental Biology begin to experiment 
with this model.10 

Any attempt to fundamentally change 
a well­embedded system with such large 
degrees of inertia as those of scholarly 
communication will be difficult. These dif­
fi culties are compounded by the worldwide, 
international nature of the problem, which 
makes consensus and coordination diffi cult. 
However we are seeing growing acceptance 
of open access by researchers as they deposit 
their work in repositories, publish in open 
access journals, and read their colleagues’ 
work in these journals. 

Librarians are seeing the benefi ts of open 
access, and they are increasingly taking on 
the role of host for their institutions’ reposi­
tories. Funding bodies and politicians are 
waking up to the inefficiencies of the old 
subscription­based system and are looking 
critically at new models. This combination of 
high­level and grassroots desire for change 
will enable us to overcome the inertia in the 
system and the difficulties of working in a 
diverse and multicultured environment. 

SPARC Europe is proud to be able to play 
its part in encouraging and supporting change 
within Europe and to follow the successful 
example of SPARC in North America. Al­

C&RL News May 2004 / 267 

http:model.10
http:eprints.org


though less than two years old, SPARC Europe 
already has more than 80 members in 14 European 
countries.11 By coming together, members can am­
plify their voices and help to create change.12 

Notes 
1. www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_ 

committees/science_and_technology_committee 
/scitech111203a.cfm. Transcripts of the oral 
evidence can be found at www.publications. 
parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmsctech.htm. 

2. www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess­berlin 
/berlindeclaration.html. 

3. www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispol­
pub.html. 

4. www.soros.org/openaccess. 
5. Details of the various Institutional Repos­

itory software can be found at GNU Eprints: 
software.eprints.org/, CDSWare: cdsware.cern. 
ch/, Arno: www.uba.uva.nl/arno. 

6. DARE: www.surf.nl/en/themas/index2. 
php?oid=7, SHERPA: www.sherpa.ac.uk/. 

7. www.doaj.org. 
8. www.biomedcentral.com. 
9. David C. Prosser, “From Here to There: 

A Proposed Mechanism for Transforming 
Journals from Closed to Open Access,” 

Learned Publishing, vol. 16 (2003), pp. 163– 
66. (An earlier version is available at www.arl. 
org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=g29). 

10. Oxford University Press: www3.oup.co.uk/ 
nar/special/14/default.html, Company of Biologists: 
www.biologists.com/openaccess.html, Society of 
Experimental Biology (Journal of Experimental 
Botany): www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=news_ 
openaccess_0304. 

11. www.sparceurope.org/, www.arl.org/sparc. 
12. www.arl.org/create/. 

(“Reflections...” continued from page 263) 
Course Options areas of the Control Panel, 
but not to the Assessment section of the 
Control Panel or to the Manage Groups 
functions in the User Management section. 
Therefore, a user with the Course Builder 
role would not have access to the Online 
Gradebook. If a course is Unavailable to stu­
dents, the Course Builder may still access 
the course Web site. 

5. Renee Vaillancourt McGrath, “Meet New 
People and Make Friends,” Public Libraries 
42, no. 4 (July/August 2003): 210. See also, 
John Agada,“Profiling Librarians with the My­
ers­Briggs Type Indicator,” Education for In­
formation 16, no. 1 (March 1998): 57–58. 

268 / C&RL News May 2004 

www.arl.org/create
www.arl.org/sparc
http:www.sparceurope.org
www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=news
www.biologists.com/openaccess.html
http:www3.oup.co.uk
http:www.biomedcentral.com
http:www.doaj.org
http:www.sherpa.ac.uk
www.surf.nl/en/themas/index2
www.uba.uva.nl/arno
http:software.eprints.org
www.soros.org/openaccess
www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispol
www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin
www.publications
www.parliament.uk/parliamentary
http:change.12
http:countries.11