Европын Судалгааны Зөвлөл (European Research Council) “arXiv” нээлттэй судалгааны мэдээллийн сангийн санаачлагын олон улсын хөтөлбөрийг дэмжлээ.
The European Research Council (ERC) today announced that it has joined an international partnership supporting arXiv, one of the major scientific repositories in the areas of physics and mathematics which is operated by Cornell University Library (New York, US). The ERC is the first European research funding organisation to join the arXiv initiative. By doing so, the ERC reaffirms its commitment to open access and to ensuring that the fruits of the research it funds can be freely accessed, read and used, both by scientists working in relevant areas and by the public.
Prof. Nicholas Canny, ERC Scientific Council member and Chair of the Council’s Working Group on Open Access, said: “The Scientific Council has long recognized the global position that arXiv has already attained as a scientific scholarly communication forum. By joining arXiv, the ERC now has the chance to contribute to the further development and enhancement of the service to match the evolving needs of the scientific community. I hope that other European research funders will rapidly join the ERC in supporting this initiative.”
arXiv, which started off as a repository for preprints in physics and later expanded to mathematics, statistics and computer science, operates eight mirror sites around the world. The service not only allows scientists to share their research in the form of preprints before publication, but also to deposit their final accepted manuscripts or their published articles, depending on publisher permissions.
As a major resource for researchers in the Physical and Engineering Sciences, arXiv is actively used by ERC-funded researchers to provide open access to their research results. More than 3,000 research papers resulting from ERC projects have already been deposited. In 2012, arXiv saw around 64 million downloads from all over the world and received more than 84,000 new submissions. More than 170 institutions from 22 countries are currently supporting the initiative financially.
Oya Yildirim Rieger, arXiv Program Director, commented, “We are very pleased that the ERC has decided to join the arXiv sustainability initiative, further strengthening the international partnership we are forming to create a sound business and governance model for the scientific repository.”
The decision of the ERC to join the group of organisations supporting arXiv comes at a time when providing free access to research outputs is being championed both within Europe (see the European Commission latest press release on open access) and in the United States. arXiv, which was recommended by the ERC Scientific Council as a repository for ERC-funded research papers in Physical Sciences and Engineering, is well-placed to play a key role in realising these ambitions.
European Research Council and open access
The ERC has always been a strong supporter of open access. The ERC Scientific Council’s first statement on open access affirmed its commitment to make research results from ERC funded projects available in open access repositories. In 2007, the Scientific Council adopted its guidelines on open access, stating that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects should be made freely available within six months of publication. In June 2012, the ERC Scientific Council re-affirmed its commitment to open access and strongly encouraged the use of discipline-specific repositories such as arXiv. In July 2012, it announced its participation in Europe PubMed Central (see ERC press release).
An analysis undertaken by the ERC in 2012 on a sample of over 600 journal articles indicates that ERC grantees are already performing well: 62 % of journal articles from ERC projects are available in open access. The share varies across research domains with figures close to 70 % in Life Sciences, 65% in Physical Sciences and Engineering and 50 % in Social Sciences and Humanities. Under Horizon 2020, the new EU Research Framework Programme which runs from 2014 to 2020, open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to results will become the default. This requirement will also apply to grants awarded by the ERC, which are funded as part of the Framework Programme.
Note to the editors
About the European Research Council (ERC)
Set up in 2007 by the European Union, the ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age based in Europe. Since its launch, the ERC has selected some 3,860 researchers and their frontier research projects for funding. The ERC operates according to an “investigator-driven”, or “bottom-up”, approach, allowing researchers to identify new opportunities in all fields of research (Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences and Social Sciences and Humanities).
The ERC, which is currently funded under the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7), has a total budget of €7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013. In November 2011, the European Commission proposed a substantial increase of the ERC budget to over € 13 billion under Horizon 2020.
About arXiv
arXiv started in 1991. It was originally hosted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US and called the LANL preprint archive (www.lanl.gov). It has been hosted and operated by Cornell University since 2001. The Cornell University Library has been steering arXiv toward sustainability since January 2010, when it launched an initiative to create a business model that would engage libraries and research laboratories that benefit most from arXiv’s service.
For more information
ERC website
http://erc.europa.eu/
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Maud SCELO
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Madeleine DRIELSMA
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