European Union Will Require Open-Access Publishing

The European Union plans to require open-access publishing for research that it finances beginning in 2014. The announcement came from the European Commission, executive arm of the 27-nation bloc, which is hammering out the details of Horizon 2020, its nearly $100-billion, six-year financing package for research. One day earlier, the British government announced that it would require open-access publishing for research that it pays for.
The EU plan will allow researchers who receive money through Horizon 2020 to choose two ways of publishing their results, either by paying costs upfront to publishers, in a format known as “gold” open access, or by putting their articles into open-access repositories online.