ALLEA Statement in Support of Secondary Publication Rights for Scholarly Articles

The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) has for many years supported the move away from proprietary models of scholarly publishing towards Open Access (OA). ALLEA, therefore, welcomes the recognition in the laws of an increasing number of European countries of so-called ‘Secondary Publication Rights’ (SPRs) that allow publicly funded researchers to make their published articles available on institutional websites and non-profit online repositories, regardless of persistent contractual practices that require authors to transfer their copyrights to commercial publishers. SPRs are proving to be strong enablers of OA to publicly funded research output, without the excessive costs associated with Gold OA models. ALLEA therefore calls upon the European Union (EU) to initiate harmonising legislation that would accord SPRs to scientific researchers in all 27 Member States of the EU.