Blog post by Stephen Wyber
As discussions accelerate around what the European Research Area (ERA) Act will cover, and how it will do it, decision-makers—both among Member States and in the European Parliament—will need to determine what type of Act will best align with their priorities.
In our review of the contributions to the call for evidence on the ERA Act, these differing preoccupations were clear. Respondents focused on rights and freedoms called for stronger related guarantees, while those pushing for innovation sought easier collaboration between research and business. Publishers claimed that the status quo represents a functioning system, while others pointed out concerns around barriers and unsustainability.
However, one group whose voice was perhaps less audible in the consultation—but which is strong when it comes to discussions around the future of the Horizon Europe programme—are the so-called Widening countries.
Understanding the “Widening” Context
The term ‘widening’ relates to Member States in the east and south of the Union, which typically have less strong research sectors. This, in turn, is associated with fewer and lower impact outputs, less engagement with industry, and higher outflows of talent. As a result, these countries have less ability to attract further funding, making the problem worse.
Through ‘Widening’ actions, the EU has sought to counter this spiral, investing in initiatives that aim to shift this dynamic to a more virtuous circle.
However, the effort to bring national research sectors across Europe up to a high level is not just a question of how much money is made available. It is also a question of how it is spent. Specifically, it requires asking whether rules around copyright— and the business models built on top of them—optimally support the access, pursuit and sharing of research.
Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) has called for the upcoming ERA Act to take the following steps:
- Introduce a Europe-wide legislated Secondary Publication Right, and remove barriers to the adoption of rights retention policies.
- Update the EU’s copyright exception for research to ensure it provides both the flexibility to embrace technology and the breadth to enable partnerships across borders and with industry.
- Safeguard libraries and research institutions against market conduct that undermines their ability to fulfil their missions.
Achieving these steps could be particularly powerful for Widening countries.
Widening Access and Dissemination
Crucially, the changes we propose in European law are not designed to regulate strictly how research is carried out. Instead, they provide essential legal safeguards to ensure that libraries and research institutions are not placed at a disadvantage.
Institutions in Widening countries are particularly at risk of getting a bad deal. As they face a triple disadvantage in the market:
- Limited commercial appeal: Smaller budgets make these buyers less attractive to major publishers.
- Rigid standard terms: Because institutions lack leverage, publishers are unlikely to customise contracts to win their business.
- Negotiation gaps: These institutions often lack the specific expertise or human resources needed to bargain for better deals.
This means that even where institutions do sign deals, they often contain worse terms, for example, regarding possibilities for copying, use in research and education, text-and-data mining, preservation, and more.
Similar problems appear around publishing. Institutions in Widening countries are less likely to have the opportunity to participate in Transformative agreements (which combine both subscription access and payment for the costs of publishing open access). Institutions and funders in the region are also less likely to have the bandwidth to engage in initiatives such as cOAlition S, which has worked to advance open access.
Furthermore, they have less money available to pay Article Processing Charges, especially in traditionally less well-funded disciplines. This is, again, compounded by a lack of expertise and human resources to negotiate better deals. The result? Work carried out in Widening countries is too often unavailable to colleagues within the same region, as well as missing out on the greater dissemination and impact that Open Access publications provide.
The measures KR21 proposes for the ERA Act would help by accelerating the shift to open access. As we approach 100% open access, the inability to pay for subscriptions becomes less of a challenge, and as long as truly open licences are used, there are no meaningful barriers to use either.
Secondary Publication Rights and rights retention will also offer valuable clarity around the possibilities—and even the obligation—for publicly funded work to be published as well. The result should be a stronger research footprint for Widening countries, as well as the development of national research ecosystems.
A Trigger for Overdue Change
The challenges facing researchers in Widening countries are not only linked to the way that markets (dys)function. There is also a risk of greater ‘stickiness’ in attitudes and approaches that inadvertently harm research performance.
Within institutions, this is typically reflected in how research assessment is carried out, with an ongoing dependency on non-open tools such as Web of Science and Scopus. These are structured in ways that create an incentive to publish in so-called high-impact journals (many of which are owned by the companies running the ranking tools).
Even where there have been successful efforts to develop local diamond open access journals (which impose costs neither on authors nor readers), the perception that a closed international journal is somehow more prestigious has been slow to change.
The result is that progress towards open access—with all of its benefits in terms of impact, reach, and follow-on innovation and research—is slower in these regions, at a time when the research field in richer countries is rushing ahead. This situation is compounded by the fact that national governments too often make dependence on outdated research assessment part of official policy. This may be explained, in part, by a feeling that national research performance itself is measured by numbers of publications in so-called ‘high impact’ journals.
Of course, a change in the law does not necessarily lead to an immediate change in attitude. At the same time, this does represent a powerful case for acting at the European level. If all EU countries implement such laws, this removes the concern that some countries may gain some sort of ‘advantage’, as well as presenting a united front to a publishing sector that has been resistant to change.
Stopping the Brain Drain
As highlighted above, Widening countries stand to gain the most from the changes KR21 is proposing, precisely because of their currently lower rates of open access uptake and the challenges they face in moving away from older models.
In doing so, they will provide a boost to local research ecosystems by increasing reach and impact, making them more attractive for researchers.
But there are benefits that go beyond more open access to and dissemination of research. Progress at the European level offers the possibility to update the copyright laws that determine what researchers can do with materials to which they have access, as well as to facilitate cross-border collaboration. In particular, abolishing the counter-productive discrimination between non-commercial and commercial research will support stronger research-industry partnerships.
Harmonisation and clarity around cross-border working will create stronger possibilities for researchers to participate in cutting-edge collaborative research from home, rather than needing to travel abroad to do so. Access to research infrastructures can be simplified, potentially giving a boost to their presence in Widening countries, to the benefit of all of Europe.
Widening: It’s Just Not Just About the Money
It is clear that a concerted and ambitious approach to making copyright work for research is likely to bring particular benefits for Widening countries. In doing so, it will also complement and amplify the impact of money spent on relevant programmes.
KR21’s proposals will provide backstops that counteract the consequences of lower negotiating power, underpin a coordinated shift towards openness that will strengthen research ecosystems, and enable researchers to participate in top-level research from home.
As negotiations advance around the place of Widening in the new Horizon Europe, we encourage those involved not to forget that it’s not all about the money – it’s also about the law.
1 December 2025
