This week, Amelia is going to Baku, in Azerbaijan, for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).The internet Governance Forum was created in 2005, during the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis, and its main purpose is "to discuss a wide range of issues related to Internet Governance, and, where appropriate, to make recommendations to the international community. The working and function of the Forum will be multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent." Its establishment was formally announced by the United Nations Secretary-General in July 2006. The main themes of IGF are: openness, security, diversity and access. A new theme was introduced in IGF Brazil: critical Internet resources being one of the most debatable topics in the IG field at the moment.

It is going to be a week full of exciting discussions, challenges and  interesting meetings. You can have a look to her schedule here:

 

Monday
13:00 – 14:00 Office meeting
15:00 – 18:00 ITRE - TRAN joint meeting
18:10 – 22:30  Flight Brussels - Istanbul

Last month, Amelia published an article in Research Media about Horizon 2020 and open access. The article is attached as a pdf to this post, and a brief part of it is published below.

The Parliament has been hesitant about the extent to which it shall endorse open access. On the one hand, the scientific community loves open access: the free and accessible flow of research publications and data makes their lives easier, and advancements happen faster when knowledge is available. From this perspective, most innovative industries also happily accept the idea of pooling the strengths and wisdom facilitated particularly through base-level research. However, anyone who recalls when the Commission evaluated the Database Directive in 2006 will remember that the publishing industry at that time managed to keep a degree of protection, which everyone agreed was unnecessary and even harmful. The opposition towards open access, even if in defiance of all common sense, should therefore not be underestimated.

 

Download the complete article.

The aim of the committees of the European Parliament is to help the European Commission in initiating legislation. They are formed by MEPs from every political group in the Parliament and each Committee has a chairperson and four Vice-Chairpersons.

Memberships in a Committee can be of two kinds:

• Full Member: It has full speaking and voting rights
• Substitute Member: It has full speaking rights but can only vote in replacement of absent full members.

For every report of the Committee, the chairperson appoints a rapporteur who will be in charge. This person is selected from amongst the Members and permanent substitutes of the Committee. Normally, political groups other than the one of the rapporteur appoint a person in charge for that specific report. This person is called ‘shadow rapporteur’ or just ‘shadow’.

Right now, In the European Parliament there are 20 Committees, 2 sub-committees and 1 special committee:

During this whole week Amelia will be in Moscow taking part in the International Trade Committee Delegation to Russia. Here you can find her schedule: