European Research and Innovation days: Open Science vision for 2030
Camille Simonet reports on discussions offering the latest views on Open Science from the EU.
The European Research & Innovation Days conference took place September 22-24 and hosted the presentation of Horizon Europe, the next European Union research framework. Open Science (OS) will play a major role in this new program. Although the current standards of research assessment impede its broad uptake, European universities and stakeholders are committed to operating this change of research culture.
Open science is not a goal in itself.
Why Open Science?
To adapt to environmental change and its associated global challenges, the €100 billion EU research and innovation program has one central focus: “deliver”. That is, translating research input into effective solutions and timely deployed at scale on the horizon of 2030. Open science plays a central role in this.
“Open science is not a goal in itself” reminds Rebecca Lawrence, who presented the conclusions of the European Commission advisory group on open science policies. It serves the purpose of responding to society’s needs. As the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated very well, open research practices boost collaborations and interdisciplinarity, promote reproducibility and quality, and overall speed up the research process.
Last but not least, it contributes to building a relationship of trust between science and society, underscored Kostas Glinos who was chairing the “Open Science vision for 2030” session. This is central to the uptake of scientific evidence by policymakers and citizens.
What goal do we ask researchers to pursue?
The framework for conducting OS already exists and there are many examples of successful projects implementation relying on OS principles, but its broad uptake is missing, further explained Rebecca Lawrence. What is blocking here? The advisory group identified the main bottleneck: rewards and incentives.
OS relies on the compliance of researchers to work with those standards. However, the current evaluation system, mostly based on metrics such as numbers of publications, impact factor, or H-index only favours quantitative output. In this system, researchers must think about papers and pursue the goal of output to thrive. To allow pursuing the goal of a positive impact on society, we must move away from the publish or perish culture. “In 2030, there is no one minute where researchers think about papers output”, says Eva Mendez, Chair of the EU Open Science Policy Platform.
Commitments to new research evaluation frameworks
Many European universities and funding bodies have now adopted the next generation research assessment frameworks. Famous examples are the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) or the League of European Research Universities (LERU) “roadmap for cultural change”. These favour qualitative indicators, adopting a multi-dimensional approach, and replacing the career narrative at the centre of the evaluation process. For example, explains Bernard Rentier, author of “Open Science, the Challenge of Transparency”, by asking researcher to select THEIR top 5 preferred output, or ask what he/she think is important in THEIR work to be evaluated.
Legal frameworks, such as “Plan S”, are also under development. With effect from 2021, Plan S supporters will require papers stemming from their grants to be immediately available in Open Access in one way or another. The European Commission will adapt its legislation so that beneficiaries of Horizon Europe funding retain the intellectual property rights they need to comply with these open access obligations.
This means fostering a lot of internal negotiation and carrying out a careful consultative process.
Harmonising policies, dialogues & leadership
The framework is there, the tools are there, the will is there. “What is lacking is a harmonisation of policies”, concluded Bernard Rentier during the open question session. Important disparities between countries, sectors, and stakeholders result in legitimate concern across the research community. For example, are Ph.D. students not unfairly penalized by postdoctoral funding bodies valuing OS practises while many doctoral programmes main requirements still focus on the number of publications?
Yet, commitment and harmonised policies are not sufficient. Each institution must carve out its path to practically implement OS principles. The diversity of research activities and products requires a nuanced and domain-specific approach. “This means fostering a lot of internal negotiation and carrying out a careful consultative process” explains Dominic Tate, head of the library research support team at the University of Edinburgh.
The dialog must start both among institutions to unify their assessment procedures, and within institutions to deploy new policies adequately. This will require a clear vision and leadership roles to articulate debates and ensure the broadest contributions possible. This echoes the leitmotiv of this year’s edition of the European Research & Innovation days: to deliver, the key is to Co-design, Co-create, and Cooperate.
