Open Science is today one of the central pillars of European research policy. Its goal is to make scientific knowledge widely available, accessible, and reusable by all. Despite the strong political and institutional support for Open Access — one of the essential dimensions of Open Science — significant barriers remain, particularly those arising from traditional scientific publishing contracts, which often transfer all the authors’ economic rights to publishers.

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To overcome these obstacles, several European countries — including Austria, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria and France — have legally introduced the Secondary Publication Right (SPR). This mechanism allows authors to republish (“secondary publication”) their scientific articles in open access repositories, ensuring that the results of publicly funded research remain accessible to society as a whole.

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In Portugal, where a still significant share of publicly funded research remains subject to access restrictions, a group of academics and civil society organizations has recently developed a proposal to establish both a right and an obligation of secondary publication. This proposal is aligned with the new Open Access Policy of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and with recent reflections at the European level — notably the Letta Report (“Much More than a Market”) and the Draghi Report (“The Future of European Competitiveness”) — both emphasizing the need to guarantee the free circulation of knowledge as the “fifth freedom” of the European Union.

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This conference aims to bring together policymakers, representatives of the European Commission, national authorities, researchers, and Open Science advocates to discuss the importance of introducing the SPR at both national and EU levels, and to explore legislative and policy pathways for their implementation.