From Budapest to Brussels: Hungarian Academy of Sciences Signs EC OA Petition

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 16:44:55 +0000

Dear Colleagues,

Please pardon me a moment of Pannonian pride:

It is mete and fitting that the President of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences in Budapest, Professor E. Sylvester Vizi, has today signed the
Petition in support of the European Commission's proposed Open Access
Self-Archiving Mandate, on behalf of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

    http://www.ec-petition.eu/

The Open Access Movement began in Budapest in December 2001 as the
Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), launched by the Hungarian
philanthropist, George Soros and the Open Society Institute (OSI).

    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

OA has since become a global movement and is now accelerating rapidly
toward the critical step that will usher in Open Access to all research
output worldwide, starting in Europe with the EC Self-Archiving Mandate,
but inevitably to be followed in the US with the FRPAA Self-Archiving
Mandate, and elsewhere in the world by kindred policies:

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European%20Commission
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Federal%20Research%20Public%20Access%20Act%20%28FRPAA%29

I cannot resist adding (though it includes an element of conjecture)
that Pannonia even had a hand in formulating the optimal version of the
European OA Self-Archiving mandate, in the form of the European Research
Advisory Board's (EURAB) policy proposal:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/eurab/pdf/eurab_scipub_report_recomm_dec06_en.pdf

On the EURAB committee that formulated that excellent policy was the
Vice President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Professor Norbert
Kroo.

The President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has now closed the
circle, in signing the EC OA petition on behalf of the Academy.

Many thanks also too to Prof. Csaba Pleh, Deputy General Secretary of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who also played a critical mediating role.

http://www.mta.hu/index.php?id=634&no_cache=1&backPid=390&tt_news=3587&cHash=939b91f5fc

as did Barbara Kirsop, of EPT:

http://www.mta.hu/index.php?id=858&backPid=406&tt_news=3575&cHash=ddfeb1db6b

Más volt eddig, másképp lesz most!

Sincerely,

Hernád István (Stevan Harnad)
External Member, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Received on Thu Feb 01 2007 - 17:51:39 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:48:44 GMT