KR21 welcomes the publication by the European Commission (DG RTD) of a new study identifying copyright and other barriers faced by the European research sector.
Entitled “Improving access to and reuse of research results, publications and data for scientific purposes” this wide-ranging study identifies many of the barriers faced by European researchers alongside a number of important regulatory recommendations also.
The timing of the study is particularly opportune – coming weeks after the landmark Enrico Letta report which calls for the introduction of a Fifth Freedom – the freedom of circulation of knowledge. It does an impressive and comprehensive job at identifying barriers to the realisation of a European Research Area. In particular, in calling for scientific research to be explicitly recognised as a core regulatory objective of the EU, it implicitly recognises that despite the tens of billions of taxpayer euros invested in research each year, Europe (unlike many of its competitors) still handicaps itself with poor copyright regulations. As KR21 put it in a recent blog: “In effect, Europe’s knowledge economy is trying to drive with the handbrake on.”
In particular, KR21 would like to highlight from the report a number of particularly important themes:
- The urgency of an EU-wide secondary publishing law that obligates that publicly funded research (in its final, Version of Record format) is immediately available to those who funded it – the public.
- The need to introduce a flexible open research exception in EU law that supports knowledge valorisation – bringing us in line with other cutting-edge economies and jurisdictions which don’t make artificial and chilling distinctions between commercial and non-commercial reports.
- How cutting-edge research, such as AI, is being undermined by uncertainties around the interplay of contracts and licences, technical protection measures and a lack of appropriate exceptions to allow sharing of data with project partners.
It is time to recognise that copyright law has for too long hampered scientific research, knowledge valorisation and as a result, innovation, growth and the search for answers to social, environmental and other challenges; something it was never designed to do. The false equivalence between the rights provided to the copyright industries (at the expense of equity and research productivity), and the public interest in a vibrant economy needs to be reassessed. Copyright is important as a cultural policy but it shouldn’t hamper wider growth and innovation.
KR21 hopes that under the next mandate the EU will unleash the power of science through long overdue regulatory reform. This will put us on a level playing field with other cutting-edge economies who have long valued flexibility in the laws that regulate access and reuse of information and data-driven innovation.
Evidence and conclusions from the study that KR21 found particularly important include:
- 80% of researchers face significant barriers due to a lack of subscriptions to access copyright knowledge resources.
- 60% of participants find pay walls and technological protection measures to be a major obstacle in accessing copyrighted online resources
- 81.4% advocated that the copyright law should contain an open-ended clause that generally permits the use of copyright-protected knowledge resources for all kinds of research purposes
- The conclusion that “TPM (Technological protection measures) in conjunction with online contracts currently have substantial legal backing often prevailing over research freedom.”
- The conclusion that the non-commercial research requirement has become a source of legal uncertainty and appears outdated, especially in light of research practices that increasingly involve collaborations with private partners, often encouraged and even required by European and national research funding schemes. More concretely, the non-commercial use requirement raises doubts about the applicability of copyright exceptions when a research project includes industry funding or public-private partnerships.
Furthermore, the potential commercialisation of research conducted within publicly funded institutions through technology offices and commercialisation divisions poses a risk of legal complications for researchers who initially relied on these exceptions under the assumption of non-commercial use.
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning is being avoided as researchers “are afraid of copyright infringement.”
23 May 2024
