The Publications Office of the European Union has published the final report of the study Economic analysis of options for improving EU legislative and regulatory frameworks with impact on access and reuse of publicly funded R&I results and of publications and data for scientific purposes.

Europe has made real progress on Open Access. But being able to read a paper is not the same as being able to reuse it. Research reuse means being able to analyse scientific outputs, combine them with other sources, process them automatically, and build new knowledge and services on top of them. This is the gap at the centre of the new European Commission study: the move from access to reuse.

The report provides a detailed economic analysis of how legal frameworks, publishing models, research infrastructures, and technical conditions interact. It focuses on two main policy areas: an EU-wide Secondary Publication Right (SPR) and the harmonisation of the copyright exception for research. Together, these two areas are central to the future of access to and reuse of publicly funded research results, publications, and data in Europe.

Secondary Publication Right and the challenge of fragmentation

One of the study’s central issues is the Secondary Publication Right (SPR). In simple terms, SPR gives researchers a legal basis to make a version of their published work openly available in a repository, under specific conditions, even when publishing agreements would otherwise restrict deposit. It is a way to support Green Open Access and ensure that publicly funded research can circulate more widely.

Several European countries already have national SPR provisions in place, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Bulgaria. The study shows that these provisions can improve legal certainty and support repository-based access to research outputs.

At the same time, the report also shows the limits of national fragmentation. Rules differ across countries. Embargo periods are not aligned. The versions covered, such as the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or the Version of Record (VoR), vary. Permitted reuse conditions also differ.

The report therefore assesses scenarios for an EU-wide SPR, ranging from a narrower approach covering journal articles after an embargo period, to broader options that could reduce embargoes and cover books, conference papers, datasets, software, and other research outputs.

The design choices matter. An SPR that only covers a limited set of outputs after long embargo periods has a different practical impact from one that supports broader, faster, and more machine-readable access. This is particularly important if Europe wants research outputs to be not only visible, but also reusable at scale.

 The research copyright exception and the cost of uncertainty

The second major issue is the harmonisation of the copyright exception for research purposes. The current EU framework still leaves differences across Member States, creating obstacles for cross-border collaboration, text and data mining, access to protected materials, and the use of technological protection measures.

A more harmonised research exception is therefore not only a legal issue. It is also a practical issue for the European Research Area. Researchers and research-performing organisations need clarity on what they can access, analyse, share, and reuse. Reducing legal uncertainty can help knowledge move more easily across institutions, countries, and sectors.

Open Access shifts costs, it does not remove them

One of the report’s important contributions is its economic analysis. The transition to Open Access has not removed access costs; in many cases, it has moved them.

Research-performing organisations may still face subscription costs, Article Processing Charges (APCs), transformative agreement costs, repository costs, staff costs, and administrative burdens linked to rights management and compliance. Publishers may need to adapt business models. Repositories may need to scale their technical and organisational capacity to support deposit, rights information, metadata, and machine-readable access.

This means that the access and reuse agenda cannot be addressed through legislation alone. Legal reforms are important, but they need to be supported by reliable infrastructures, high-quality metadata, sustainable repositories, clear workflows, and evidence-based monitoring.

In other words, reuse is an ecosystem question. It depends on the alignment of legal rights, institutional practices, technical capacity, and trusted infrastructure.

AI, text and data mining, and the importance of provenance

The report also addresses an issue that is becoming increasingly central: the relationship between access to research outputs and the development of large language models (LLMs) and AI-enabled research tools.

Text and data mining (TDM) exceptions clarify what may be done with content once lawful access exists. SPR, by contrast, influences what content is available, from where, and under what conditions.

This distinction matters. A legal right to mine content is only useful if lawful, high-quality, and reusable content can actually be accessed. A stronger and more harmonised repository-based access environment could help create more predictable and lawful sources of scientific content for analysis and reuse. However, access alone is not enough. Responsible reuse also requires trusted infrastructure, clear data provenance, machine-readable rights information, and appropriate governance mechanisms. These issues are increasingly important in policy discussions around transparency, copyright compliance, and the responsible use of high-quality data in AI development.

A shared agenda for Europe

The main message is clear. Europe has made important progress on Open Access, but the next challenge is reuse. Research outputs must not only be available. They must be legally reusable, technically accessible, well described, and connected through sustainable infrastructures.

The study confirms something that OpenAIRE works with in practice every day: access and reuse rights only become meaningful when there is infrastructure capable of implementing them. This is reflected in the OpenAIRE Graph, which connects research outputs with the wider context needed to support discovery, monitoring, and reuse. If Europe strengthens rights for secondary publication and harmonises research exceptions, those rights will need to be implemented through trusted and interoperable systems. They will need persistent identifiers, machine-readable rights information, deposit workflows, repository support, and evidence-based monitoring.

For OpenAIRE and the wider Open Science community, the report provides an important reference point. It makes the legal and economic case for improving access to and reuse of publicly funded research, while underlining that the next phase of Open Science will depend not only on making research outputs available, but on ensuring that they can be trusted, connected, and reused across the European research ecosystem.