The Council of the European Union released recommendations on Friday (November 23) encouraging member states to study open access, but open access advocates are calling this a weak approach.

The plan invites member states to support experiments in various open access plans, including a delayed open access plan; support research on how scientific information is accessed; and involve stake holders and publishing companies in the debate on open access.

In May, this council also proposed a "wide public access" plan, making un-copyrighted research results -- not peer-reviewed papers -- publicly available.

Mariano Gago, EU minister of science and technology said, "The question of open access is to be dealt with in parallel with the viability of scientific publishers," Reuters reported.

On his blog, Peter Suber, senior researcher at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and open access advocate, called the recommendations "weak tea," and noted that although the EU is taking the issue seriously, Gago's comment shows that they are not closer to any open access mandate for publicly-funded research.

"Though we should be grateful that there are signs of some sort of grasp of the issues at stake, we have to conclude that the Council still hasn't got the point," Alma Swan, director of Key Perspectives, a consulting company to scholarly information industry, wrote on her blog. "If we wish Europe's research and development to move forward at optimal speed, one which is now much faster than it ever could be before, facilitated by the Web, access to research findings must be immediate."