Why Wikimedia Supports Secondary Publication Rights for Publicly Funded Research

Through its flagship research programme, Horizon Europe, the European Union will spend 95.5 billion euro on science and research until 2027. Yet, the results of this research in many cases will not be accessible to Europeans – academics, regular citizens or even Wikipedians.

In he most extreme cases European taxpayers will have paid for the research institution, for the actual research, but the research institutions and the researchers will still need to pay expensive licenses for academic journals for access. And even then, the public won’t be able to make use of this knowledge.

Wikipedia provides knowledge to the general public. Yet, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It relies on reliable sources, such as journalistic works, archives and open science repositories to ensure information integrity. In the current situation, we believe that our societies need more information integrity.

The Citation Challenge

Wikipedia’s strength lies in its commitment to verifiability. Every claim needs a reliable source. Ideally a source that everyone can check. Our volunteers spend countless hours tracking down academic papers, scientific studies, and peer-reviewed research to ensure that Wikipedia articles meet our standards for accuracy and reliability.

But here’s the catch: many of these sources are trapped behind expensive paywalls. A single article can cost €30-40 to access. And then it is only accessible to this one editor, not to every reader. Thus even if the editor has access, everyone else can’t verify that the citation is correct.

It’s like asking someone to verify facts using books they’re not allowed to read. Although these books have been publicly funded.

What Are Secondary Publication Rights?

Secondary Publication Rights (SPR) give researchers the legal right to make their peer-reviewed publications freely available, typically after a short embargo period, even when they’ve signed restrictive publishing agreements.

Under SPRs, researchers can deposit the final accepted version of their articles in open repositories—making them accessible to everyone, from Wikipedia editors in Bulgaria to students in Belgium, from journalists in Helsinki to curious readers in rural Portugal.

Even with SPRs, academic journals still remain relevant. They provide valuable services: organising peer review, editing, formatting, and maintaining the scholarly record. Researchers can still publish in prestigious journals and these still sell subscriptions.

Six European countries currently have SPRs: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Netherlands and Slovenia. The majority of EU countries, however, have not adopted SPRs. This hinders access to a big chunk of publicly funded research and knowledge. Furthermore, cross-border cooperations and publications are made harder by inconsistent rules across Europe.

Why This Matters for Wikimedia

Enabling participation at scale: Wikipedia is written by volunteers around the world. When research is openly accessible, more people can participate in creating and improving articles on scientific, medical, historical, and technical topics. Better sources mean better articles.

Bridging the knowledge gap: The current system creates a two-tiered knowledge system — one for those with institutional access and deep pockets, another for everyone else. SPR helps level the playing field, ensuring that most publicly funded knowledge isn’t just for the privileged few.

Strengthening reliability: When sources are openly available, they can be checked, verified, and scrutinized by more people. This improves Wikipedia’s quality and helps readers trust what they’re reading.

Wikimedia europe supports spr

We encourage the European Commission to implement harmonised legislation that enables uniformly applied secondary publication rights across all 27 Member States. It should apply to all published scientific articles, studies and reports resulting from publicly funded research.

We furthermore believe that the European Research Area Act planned for 2026 is an opportunity to make this happen. It would strengthen overall information integrity, European competitiveness, and level the knowledge playing field.