The European Research Council (ERC) supports the principle of open access to research results as a fundamental part of its mission. It strongly endorses the policy that informs the OA 2020 initiative for the large-scale transition to open access. As an organization that is governed by scientists, the ERC considers it crucial that this transition take into account the important role of researchers in this context, be it as producers of knowledge, as actors in the review and publication process (within the established system or otherwise), or as users of other researchers’ output. The vast diversity of situations across different research communities makes this a complex and challenging task. With this backdrop, we will first outline the ERC’s approach towards open access, highlighting some of the bottlenecks in the implementation. We will then discuss a number of initiatives that the ERC has engaged in to support the researchers it funds in opening up their results, and provide a glimpse of some ideas for the future.

About the speaker: Dagmar Meyer is a Policy Adviser at the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) in Brussels. Her work focuses on the policy and strategy related aspects of open access, research data management and sharing, and open science more generally. She closely interacts with her counterparts at the European Commission and is in regular contact with research funders, publishers and other stakeholders across Europe. Before joining the ERCEA in 2012, Dagmar worked for three years as Policy Officer for the European Commission's DG Research and Innovation on issues related to researcher mobility and careers. She holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Heidelberg.