EIFL’s comments to the European Commission's Call for Evidence supporting a review of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive focus on two specific areas: facilitating research and sharing the results of publicly-funded research.

First, EIFL calls for a harmonized, mandatory research exception to update the current optional exception under Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive, whose inconsistent implementation across Member States creates legal uncertainty for researchers, particularly in cross-border collaborations and public-private partnerships. The exception should cover all types of research and works, and licence terms and technological protection measures should not be allowed to override the exception. Without a clear, guaranteed right to research and to share research results, ambitions for a common European Research Area will remain largely unfulfilled.

Second, EIFL calls for an EU-level Secondary Publication Right (SPR), which would give authors of publicly-funded research a legal right to share their work in open access repositories, even in the absence of an open access publishing agreement with the publisher, or a national policy on open access. (Currently seven countries have adopted SPR in national law: Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Slovenia). EIFL's submission includes a model provision on SPR in copyright law, developed by EIFL in 2025, along with case studies from Repository Managers in Latvia, Armenia, Serbia and Moldova sharing their practical experiences obtaining and depositing published research, and how a Secondary Publication Right would be of benefit.

Six years after the DSM Directive introduced mandatory exceptions for text and data mining, teaching and preservation of cultural heritage, it is time for the research exception to receive the same treatment to boost open science, support the ‘fifth freedom’ of free movement of knowledge and research across the EU, and strengthen Europe’s competitiveness as a research area.

Read EIFL's submission.

More information 

Read more about Secondary Publication Right.
See EIFL joins landmark statement on Open Science.