New European Initiatives about Open Access

Open Access (OA) is a free and unrestricted online availability of scientific and scholarly materials (data, literature, ...). The Budapest Open Access Initiative in December 2001 published the first major international statement on OA in February 2002. Since then, OA has become a popular subject. For more details about Open Access, you can read the dedicated wikipedia page.

Recently, two documents have been published:

• a document published by the Council of the European Union concerning access to scientific data (starting on page 37):
  http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/intm/97225.pdf
  


• a document published by the French National Research Agency (ANR) recommends to use the HAL service. The HAL service is one of the Open Archives Initiative projects in France:
  http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/actualite/13