European e-publishing network launched
A European academic digital publishing initiative, subsidised with 1.4 million euro from the European Commission's Information Society DG was launched on 17 September. FIGARO is an academic publishing project that will create a European network of institutions providing e-publishing support to the European academic community. The consortium will investigate new business models for scholarly publishing and stimulate open access to publications produced and distributed. Participants will benefit from one another's technological, scientific and organisational knowledge within the network. Project participants include universities in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Italy and Belgium, along with various commercial ICT (information communication technologies) and publishing companies and SPARC, the scholarly publishing and academic resources coalition.