It's beginning!
EU journal replacement set to start this fall. Free OA publishing for all authors from 11 supporting countries. This is Germany's DFG press release:
"New Publishing Opportunities for Researchers: Germany Joins Open Research Europe"
https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2026/ifr-26-21
Now, if only the funders mandated publication in these journals. Not suggested or supported or funded, but mandated: that all reports funded by the grant are to be published there. May they find the strength to do the right thing.
This would be nice, but there are problems that some funders like to use to defend their inaction. For instance, in Germany, the DFG claims that academic freedom includes the choice of publishing venue. So if they mandated ORE, they would violate the German constitution.
In fact, a slightly related case has been in front of the Germany constitutional court for some years now (but nobody knows when they will take it up).
So this may work in some countries but not everywhere.
Preprint servers are a low-cost mechanism for providing free access to research findings, and can also significantly accelerate research itself by making results available immediately. This Perspective article proposes that funding agencies should mandate preprint posting to ensure universal free access to the world’s scientific output, as well as stimulate new peer review and research evaluation initiatives.
Actually, the case before the German constitutional court is exactly an example of such a mandate for depositing a copy of an article:
https://irights.info/artikel/zweitveroeffentlichungsrecht-bundesverfassungsgericht-konstanz/31878
The decision has been overdue for 4 years now. So precisely these kinds of mandates are NOT possible everywhere - yet?
What definitely IS possible is funders mandating institutions to have a modern infrastructure - they all do this already - just not for the kind of infrastructure we're talking abiout here.
P.S.: I actually filked something that the US would call an "amicus brief" to the German constitutional court wrt to this case. I argued that the court should judge the case on its merit and substance, rather than the judicial formalisms of the mandate in question.
Experts told me that the court is unlikely to rule on the substance matter and simply strike down the mandate for formal reasons. I argued that a decision on the substance would help academia in Germany either way:
1. If it is indeed illigal to mandate authors where they must publish, then every job ad, funding description or tenure procedure that asks for "publications in journals" violates our constitutional rights.
I'd project that as long as the case is pending before the court, even such "advice" or "asking" will remain completely off the table in Germany - and likely any other countries where choice of publication venue has historically been regarded as covered by academic freedom legislation.
I don't see this as a major obstacle, though and I support authors not being forced to do things they don't want to do.
But I'm all for institutions being forced to do what is in the common interest, but they don't want to do. One institution forced to act in the public interest commonly means hundreds of authors also do what is in the common interest, but without being forced.
Why go after individuals, when you can go after institutions?
As with the climate crisis, I have become very skeptical of the individual responsibility slant that lets the big players get off the hook:
Mandates on individual authors remind me a bit of the "carbon footprint" campaign of BP - at least they seem to have analogous effects in that too few people are thinking of how to accomplish systemic change.
Björn Brembs
Albert Cardona
VelteropⓐⓊ🪂🇪🇺🇳🇱🇬🇧🇩🇪
