STM NEWSROOM

On 10 June, the European Parliament’s STOA panel (on the future of science and technology) held a session highlighting AI, system-level misaligned incentives, and research culture as key factors behind the rise in research integrity issues. Several speakers encouraged a focus on the reasons motivating misconduct rather than on post-fact enforcement, although the importance of…

The European Commission is exploring methods for reserving TDM/AI rights, with a view to making the most mature ones mandatory for AI companies to read and respect under the AI Act’s Code of Practice. A first workshop took place on 2 June, with TDMRep emerging as the protocol with the most support among rightsholders. STM…

On Thursday 11 June, the Cypriot Presidency of the EU Council reached a compromise proposal for the next EU budget, in response to the Commission’s proposal. The Council’s compromise proposes a 2% cut to the Commission’s overall budget and includes a Research & Innovation allocation (€148.6 billion for Horizon Europe) that is 15% lower than the Commission’s…

STM participates in a working group that the EU COM runs on AI in science, which last month published the third version of ‘Living guidelines on the responsible use of generative AI in research’.  Further thematic working groups have now been set up to consider updates on the use of AI in evaluation of proposals,…

The EU Commission has opened the process that may lead to a targeted copyright intervention. In parallel to the evaluation of the Copyright Directive, they’re also collecting stakeholders’ views on potential interventions on, among other things, transparency and remuneration for AI uses, EU-level secondary publication right and interventions on the research exception. The deadline for submissions is 25…

The EU COM is in the process of evaluating whether the Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market, adopted in 2019, has been properly implemented and has achieved its objectives. Stakeholder feedback is being collected until 5 June here.

The report, published on 30 April, acknowledges that Europe has achieved higher-than-average OA rates, that no statistically significant effect can be attributed to SPR, and that Gold Open Access (OA) and Transformative Agreements have been the underlying drivers of OA growth in Europe (in line with what our data also shows). Yet it puts forward…

The study led by Visionary Analytics on the economic impact of potential legislative interventions regarding an EU-wide Secondary Publication Right and a modified research exception has now concluded. Findings will be presented in a webinar on 13 May. Programme and registration are available here.

On 24 March 2026, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled against the state of Baden-Württemberg and the University of Konstanz, rejecting their attempt to establish a secondary publication obligation through state and institutional statutes under Section 38(4) of the German Copyright Act (UrhG). The Court found the obligation void on competence grounds: copyright legislation is a matter…

A district Court in the Netherlands sided with the national tax authority and stated that Open Access publication costs must be charged at the higher VAT rate of 21% (rather than the lower rate of 9%, which applies to purchasing material to read). The prevalent view of national tax authorities is that the VAT regime on electronic publications…