Internet Economy and Open Access

I am still in Seoul where we have just adopted the Seoul declaration. Here are some notes from my intervention on the plenary before the signing:

First I'd like to join all who congratulated the organizers, the government of Korea and the OECD for such an excellent event. I think it demonstrates that we are all aware what a vital role the internet plays in globalized economy.

What internet is enabling is many more people to get involved in creative and innovative processes. This type of innovation is called 'open innovation' and for it to work, information and data on which the innovation and creative processes are based, must be made broadly available. One set of such data is scientific data and scientific publications.

This is somehow covered in item b on page 6, bullets 2 and 5 and I would like to understand that it covers open scientific publishing as well. While we support the declaration, I would like to invite the OECD to investigate and continue to make policy recommendations in the future, with regard to the access to scientific publications that are reporting on publicly funded research.

In the near future we will be seeing an intensification of publicly funded research on sustainable development and open access to this research would speed up the dissemination of the technologies to fight climate change.

Last but not least, the internet technology itself has been developed in such an open way, and it is still based on open standards and open source solutions and as such provides a good example of the benefits of open access and open innovation.

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