[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[rch]

Lynn Raw wrote
"...When the research is paid for by
'the public' then there should be an obligation
for this to be made freely available to 'the
public' whether they are interested or not.
Admittedly, perhaps this should be limited to the
residents/taxpayers of the countries concerned (i.e.,
EU member states for EU-funded research)..."

Actually, I think that the "obligation" is now written
in tablets of Brussels stone; the European commission says
"information already paid for by the public purse
should not be paid for again each time it is accessed or used,
and .. it should benefit European companies and citizens
to the full. This means making publicly-funded scientific
information available online, at no extra cost, to
European researchers, innovative industries and
citizens, while ensuring long-term preservation." [1]

So now "Open access to scientific peer reviewed publications
has been anchored as an underlying principle in the
Horizon 2020 Regulation and the Rules of Participation
and will consequently be implemented through the relevant
provisions in the grant agreement." [2]

And it looks as though the Horizon 2020 programme, which has
nearly €80 billion available over the years to 2020 [3],
may even have some funds for taxonomy - see e.g. the website
of CETAF - the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities [4]

Richard H
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3023-103X

[1]
https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-pilot-guide_en.pdf
[2]
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/FactSheet_Open_Access.pdf
[3] https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020
[4] http://cetaf.org/search/node/Horizon%202020