"Peer-reviewed journals play a key role in scholarly communication and make an essential contribution to the progress of science and European competitiveness. The publishing and research communities agree that access to the results of European funded research is important to maximise its use and impact. However, they hold different views on whether mandated deposit in open access repositories is necessary and the embargo periods that would be appropriate. No consensus has been reached on a way forward.

The key problem is that there is no clear evidence of what the impact of archiving research outputs in open access repositories will be if implemented on a broad and systematic scale. The solution the PEER project brings is a collaboration involving the publishing, library and research communities to find out. The aim is to develop an ?observatory? to monitor the effects of systematic archiving over time. Participating publishers will collectively contribute 300 journals to the project and supporting research studies will address issues such as:

? How large-scale archiving will affect journal viability
? Whether it increases access
(http://rdd.sub.uni-goettingen.de/)