Scientific Europe Turns Into a Fair Mode: Open Access Journals Reducing The Cost of Knowledge

According to the Austrian daily „Der Standard” of September 4th, 2018, the Austrian science fonds FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung), Austria’s central institution for the funding of basic research, has communicated that the FWF together with ten other European research funding institutions have committed to require after January 1st, 2020 that all results from research funded by these institutions are published immediately in Open Access journals or platforms. These eleven institutions provide more than half of the European research funding flow. Up to day, only the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pursued a comparable publication policy. As Martin Enserink pointed out on September 9th, 2018 in Science, the institutions do not accept any more delays of up to a year before an article is made openly accessible after submission to a journal or any additional charges for the Open Access publication. - This is good news!