Public dissemination of research activities, including for purposes of verification of research results and for engaging in collaborative research, are essential to the scientific method. Europe needs a mandatory exception to copyright and other exclusive rights that facilitates all non-commercial research activities, including sharing of protected materials between researchers.
Today, COMMUNIA made a submission to the EU Start-up and Scale-up Strategy call for evidence (available as a PDF file). Due to COMMUNIA’s focus on access to knowledge, we focused on this issue, outlining specific barriers to access to knowledge that apply to start-ups and scale-ups as well as the research sector, which is the […]
At the end of February, the European Commission adopted its proposal for a Council Recommendation on the European Research Area (ERA) Policy Agenda for 2025 to 2027. The proposal follows the previous ERA Policy Agenda which ran from 2022 to 2024 and will serve as a three-year roadmap for development goals in the European Research […]
With all the hearings of Commissioners-designate in the books, we present to you our key insights for copyright policy. Unsurprisingly, copyright is only one among many concerns of von der Leyen’s second mandate. Nonetheless, it is a cross-cutting issue that will keep multiple members of her College busy. Two hearings stood out in particular: Ekaterina […]
The EU heads of state or government came together for an informal meeting in Budapest last week to adopt the “Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal” with the goal to strengthen European competitiveness, develop common economic prosperity, and ensure the EU’s sovereignty and global influence. In the declaration, the Council commends the recent […]
Join us on October 2nd, from 1500h to 1700h, for an in-person event on why Europe needs a Digital Knowledge Act at TownHall Europe, Brussels! What to expect The European Union is spending massively on research and innovation. Horizon Europe has a budget of €95.5 billion, up from a cool €80 billion for its predecessor program, […]
On April 16th 2024, 40 organisations signed the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information with the aim of preserving academic independence. The declaration calls on research institutions to unite around shared principles for open research information and a commitment to developing open research data infrastructure. Most of the conversation about Open Science in academic publishing […]
Published research outputs often end up locked behind paywalls, unavailable to many researchers and the broader public, impeding scientific – and human – progress. Despite progress in the area of open science, research funded by the European public is no exception to this. In many cases, European taxpayers are essentially asked to pay up twice, […]
On the 6th of March 2024, we were delighted to welcome a full house at our “Unlocking Knowledge Conference” at Town Hall Europe. At this event, we asked academics, civil society representatives and EU policymakers about the issues knowledge institutions and researchers still face when accessing and using copyrighted materials in their activities, particularly in […]
The 2nd edition of this publication by COMMUNIA, Centrum Cyfrowe, Wikimedia Sverige and the Intellectual Property Law Institute assembles a wider selection of interviews than the 1st edition, and features researchers working on EU-funded cross-border research projects.
A fair and modern copyright framework is essential for an enabling European research environment. However, researchers often find that their access, use and reuse of resources essential to their activities is still limited by copyright and related rights. While, thanks to the 2019 DSM directive, they now benefit from a EU wide text and data […]
