[Oa-italia] Fw: EurOpenScholarship: Press Release and Comments

[Benedetta Alosi]

Ancora qualche commento sull'incontro di Liegi a cui si sta dando molto
rilievo sulle liste internazionali, come vedete dai messaggi inviati da
Stevan Harnad.

In attesa di avere notizie piu' esaurienti sugli esiti dell'incontro da
parte italiana (erano presenti Trieste, Roma Tor Vergata, Roma Tre, Tuscia,
Vicenza e l'Istituto Superiore della Sanita') mi sembra importante dare
intanto massima diffusione all'iniziativa di creazione di una
EurOpenScholarship che pare costituisca la ragione principale della riunione
voluta dal Rettore di Liegi, Bernard Rentier.

EurOpenScholarship sara' un consorzio di universita' europee, ha commentato
Bernard Rentier, che intendono andare verso l'OA, mirando a promuovere
l'accesso aperto e convincere il piu' alto numero di  ricercatori, le loro
istituzioni e le agenzie europee che finanziano la ricerca ad impegnarsi nel
sostenere oggi quella che sara' senza alcun dubbio la modalita' di
comunicazione del domani. Il periodo di transizione sara' il piu' difficile,
ammette Rentier, e quindi l'obiettivo e' quello di facilitare quanto piu'
possibile tale transizione verso l'era dell'accesso aperto.

Scopo di questo movimento europeo per l'accesso aperto della letteratura
scientifica e accademica vuole essere quindi il lancio di tale iniziativa
che intende superare gli aspetti teorici del folto numero di adesioni alla
Dichiarazione di Berlino ed alla petizione europea dandone invece un seguito
di maggiore concretezza.

Continuare ad informare le comunita' accademiche europee sui vantaggi
dall'accesso aperto ma, allo stesso tempo, creare nelle universita' e nei
centri di ricerca repository istituzionali a livello centrale, sull'esempio
di DIGITHEQUE a Liegi, per il deposito delle pubblicazioni accademiche da
rendere, ove possibile, disponibili ad accesso aperto.
Per inciso, nel caso di DIGITHEQUE, con una "mandatory policy" basata sulla
dual strategy del deposito immediato e dell'accesso opzionale (ID/OA),
ritenuta da Stevan Harnad la strategia piu' efficace per l'immediatezza del
deposito e quindi della disponibilita' dei metadati.

L'EurOpenScholar avra' un sito web, ospitato dall'Universita' di Liegi che
rendera' disponibile informazioni sui repository istituzionali, sulle
riviste ad accesso aperto, non tralasciando le iniziative emergenti nel
campo della scientometria e delle metodologie per la valutazione.
E' anche previsto un forum di discussione sull'accesso aperto.

Trovate comunque maggiori dettagli nei messaggi allegati di seguito.

Benedetta Alosi



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad a ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: "SPARC Open Access Forum" <SPARC-OAForum a arl.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 3:24 AM
Subject: EurOpenScholarship: Press Release and Comments


>     *Cross-Posted*
>
> Moderator's note:
>
> Approximately 13 European University rectors and a handful of
> research laboratory and institute directors met last week in
> Liege, hosted by Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University, to
> discuss an initiative for "EurOpenScholarship".  Stevan Harnad
> forwarded several messages on the meeting and its results
> (thanking Alma Swan for forwarding Rentier's press release
> [below]), which we have combined here for convenience in reading.
>
> Harnad:
>
> "I could not attend the European Rectors' meeting on Open Access,
> but I did send a 23-minute PPT video, part of which, so I
> understand, was shown at the meeting.  The whole video is online.
> Please feel free to use it to promote Open Access Mandates and
> Metrics at your own institution. (The very brief intro is in
> French; the rest is in English.)
>
>       http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/liege22.mov"
>
> Bernard Rentier's comments on EurOpenScholarship
> (Excerpt translated from: http://recteur.blogs.ulg.ac.be/?p=151 )
>
> "EurOpenScholar will be a showcase and a tool for the promotion
> of OA in Europe. It will be a consortium of European universities
> resolved to move forward on OA and to try to convince the largest
> possible number of researchers, their institutions and their
> European Funding Agencies to engage now in what will undoubtedly
> be the mode of communication of tomorrow. The transitional period
> will be the most difficult. Our goal is to facilitate and thereby
> accelerate as much as possible the transition to the OA era.
>
> "The EurOpenScholar web site, hosted by the ULg,  will provide an
> information-gathering service concerning OA institutional
> repositories and OA journals, with a discussion forum on OA and
> the methods emerging in the field of scientometrics (research
> performance and impact measurement, ranking and anlysis).
>
> "EurOpenScholar's primary objective will be to open researchers'
> eyes to the new ways of promoting the spread of knowledge and of
> assessing research progress and performance in the OA era. This
> will contribute to the advancement of research in Europe and to
> the promotion of European research and European researchers.
>
> "In addition, EurOpenScholar will address itself to research
> managers, funding agencies, national and local research
> policy-makers, the R&D industry, the media, and the general
> public, facilitating synergies and technology transfer and
> providing an effective channel for the communication of  real
> science to the public, either directly or through the media."
>
> ***************
>
> The full press release from the University of Liege:
>
> Press Release from the university of Liege
> http://www.ulg.ac.be/relationsexterieures/RecteursOA/
>
> On Thursday, October 18, the Rector of the University of Liege
> hosted the Rectors of the Universities of Trieste and Rome 2,
> Roma 3, Polytechnic of Catalonia in Barcelona, Vicenza, Porto,
> from Salford, Lancaster, Rotterdam (U. Erasmus), Turin, Antwerp,
> Ghent and Southampton, as well as the chairmen or directors of
> the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the Instituto Superiore di Sanita,
> Caspur Consortium, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a
> representative of the European Commission .
>
> The purpose of the meeting was to establish the foundations of a
> European movement for Open Access to scientific and scholarly
> publications: EurOpenScholarship.
>
> The Rector of U, Liege has been involved in the movement to free
> research publications from the financial straitjacket imposed on
> universities and research centers by the large publishers. Since
> 1993, while the price index rose by about 30%, journal prices
> have risen to more than 275%, making it impossible for a normally
> funded institution to access all the literature essential for
> conducting good research.
>
> Despite the Berlin Declaration in 2003 and the European Petition
> of 2007, few universities have actually implemented a vigorous
> open access policy. That is why the Chancellor of U. Liege wanted
> to gather in Liege the senior leadership of the European
> universities that are the most advanced in this respect and to
> launch an initiative that provides a practical follow-up to the
> declaration already signed by so many research institutions.
>
> The meeting resulted in the creation of the EurOpenScholarship
> whose goal will be to continue efforts by informing the European
> university communities about the opportunities available to
> researchers today for providing open access, as well as to
> establish, in the universities and research centers in Europe, a
> central institutional repository (in Liege, "DIGITHEQUE"),
> allowing publications to be deposited and, wherever possible,
> made openly accessible to all.
>
> The University of Liege, which signed a massive OA petition in
> 2007 (the highest number of signatures from a single university)
> is positioning itself as a pioneer and clearly much of this is
> now considered the way of the future for scientific publication.
> The ambition is to spread this message across Europe.
>
>