Munich, ESOF 2006

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you to this round table in the name of Euroscience workgroup on Scientific Publishing. This symposium was organized with Pierre Baruch, a physicist and distinguished professor at the university of Paris 7 who unfortunately could not attend ESOF in person. He send his best wishes for all success to us. I take this opportunity to say how much I have appreciated working with him on the preparation of this symposium.

I would also like to mention François Praderie, former vice-president of Euroscience who likewise regrets that she could not be with us, and Simeon Anguelov. These colleagues are, along with Pierre Baruch, the originators of the working group on Publishing Science. Indeed, at ESOF 2004 in Stockholm, all three prepared a first symposium on scientific communication entitled: ‘Spreading the Word : who profits from science publishing’. All three had seen the growing importance of this topic and continued to develop it in Euroscience.

The participants in our round table will first review the new research communication capabilities the online era has opened up for universities, research institutions and research funders worldwide and then we will have a round table discussion, open also to the audience.

I hope this symposium will help stimulate an awakening in all the primary parties involved (which includes researchers, university and research funding officials, and politicians) to the need for a rapid change in the scientific communication practices in Europe. These changes are urgent and necessary to accelerate research progress.

Now I pass the microphone to our Chairman, Stevan Harnad, who will introduce our round table on open access through self-archiving.