EAS’s recommendations on Open Access
The European Astronomical Society [EAS] published a report entitled “Exploring the road to Open Access Publishing”. The report examines many aspects of open access with regard to publishing in the domain of astronomy, and provides 6 recommendations.
The EAS report explores the benefits and limitations of open access publication. The recurrent and main concern is the financial uncertainty arising from the transition from the traditional system and open access publication.
The conclusions of the report underline the importance of informing the members of the scientific community about open access as soon as possible. Also the EAS entrusts the scientists to choose the more relevant journal to publish their results considering the different publication modalities, visibility, etc.
In addition, the EAS report contains the following recommendations:
1. The highly regarded astronomy journals must maintain their quality based on peer-review by independent professional experts in the field.
2. Any publishing system must maintain a “version of record” in a sustainable way, which is also capable of migrating to newer technical systems.
3. There should be no undue restriction on scientists to publish in the journals of their choice and at the rate science developments demand.
4. If there is a mandate for astronomy to go to “gold” open access, the responsible agencies must provide the funds needed to maintain the quality and academic freedom as described in recommendations 1, 2 and 3.
5. The publishing practice in astronomy is de facto very close to full “green” open access; this will continue to be the case provided the current infrastructure for green open access with a central, widely accepted repository is maintained.
6. Because research in astronomy as well as astronomy publishing is a highly international activity, all responsible agencies are urged to come to one worldwide agreement about the mode of and transition to open access publication.
The report can be read on the EAS website.
For records, the EPS, together with the EuCheMS, published a statement entitled “Managing the Transition to Open Access Publication” in November 2013.
