Letter to the Editor ----------------------- Dear Editor of InfoWorld: I read the article "Europe's 'Google killer' goes into hiding" by James Niccolai. It is all very well to talk about Airbus and Quero as rivals to Boeing and Google (or Yahoo!). What actually matters for Europe is their science, where the USA is the undisputed leader for the past several decades. And if Europe were to match, let alone overtake the United States, in science then they should go whole hog for OPEN ACCESS. Every paper published by an European scientist should be available free on an interoperable institutional open access archive. Only then many others will see what European scientists publish and will have a chance to cite European research in their own papers. [Remember already Europe suffers because the world of science English centric and many Europeans write their research papers in other European languages.] Many studies have shown that research papers available on open access channels are cited far more often than those which are available only through subscribtion journals. Fortunately for Europe, institutions such as the Wellcome Trust, CERN, the Open Society Institute, the Electronic Publishing Trust, Bioline International, etc, are proactively promoting open access in Europe. Unfortunately, many commercial publishing firms in Europe are putting forward spurious arguments to stall the open access movement, and even venerable institutions such as the Royal Society has fallen prey to these arguments! The European leaders should make a call for mandating all publicly funded research to be made accessible through open access channels. They should also encourage the rest of the world to adopt OA. That is the only way Europe can break US hegomony in science and scholarship. Best wishes. Subbiah Arunachalam Distinguished Fellow M S Swaminathan Research Foundation Chennai 600 113 India