Last year, the European Commission published a "Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe" [1]. The report incorporates a number of strong recommendations in support of greater access to published research. Specifically, the report recommends that European research funders require "published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives".

There has been a substantial response to the report, but policies have still not been set at European level. The European Research Advisory Board [2] (EURAB), for example, has recently encouraged the EC to adopt an open access mandate. If the EC stands firm and adopts the recommendations, this will be a massive boost to open access throughout Europe. And there is now an opportunity for researchers worldwide to show their support for such action.

A group of European organisations - JISC [3] (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), SURF [4](Netherlands), SPARC Europe [5], DFG [6] (Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF [7] (Denmark's Electronic Research Library) - have posted a petition [8] to encourage the EC to formally endorse the open access recommendations. The number of signatories is rising rapidly, and if a large collection can be amassed this will demonstrate the strength of support that exists for open access.

Now is the time to act! Please sign the petition [9] today, and encourage your colleagues to do so as well.