1. Europe’s Transition to Open Science
Susan Reilly
Executive Director, LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries
WLIC 2016, Columbus, USA
@skreilly
2. Overview
Origins of the Open Science Agenda in Europe
H2020 Open Data Pilot
Member states transitioning towards Open Science
Ifs, ands, or buts?
3. Open Access
2020
The Digital Single
Market: Open Science
in Europe
European Parliament
Copyright
Reform
Member States
European Commission
H2020 Open
Data Pilot
Open Science
Cloud
Open Science
Policy Platform
FAIR
data
4. Open Science Definition
“The practice of science in a way that others
can collaborate and contribute,
where research data, lab notes and other
research processes are freely available,
with terms that allow reuse, redistribution
and reproduction of the research, it’s
underlying data and methods”
https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/foster-taxonomy/open-science-definition
5. Science in Transition: from Science 2.0
to Open Science
EU consultation on Science 2.0 (July-
September 2014)
498 responses and 27 position statements
43% of respondents chose “Open Science”
as their preferred term out of 6 terms
7. Areas for Policy Intervention
Open Access & Copyright
Citizen Science
Researchers’ Careers
Peer Review & Research Evaluation
New Metrics
Other: Funding, Skills, Infrastructure
8. EU Horizon 2020 Mandates
Open Access Mandatory (2015)
Open Data Pilot (7 funding areas, 2015)
Open Data pilot extended to all funding
areas from 2017
9. H2020 Open Data Pilot
Opt out at any stage (1/3 opted out so far)
All research data, including metadata, needed
to validate the results in a peer-reviewed
publication
Other curated or raw data, and its associated
metadata, specified in the DMP even if it did
not result in a publication;
Documentation, software, hardware or tools
required to enable reuse of the data
DMP obilgatory
11. The European Open Science Cloud
A virtual environment to store and
process large volumes of information
http://libereurope.eu/blog/2015/11/04/an-open-and-community-driven-open-science-cloud
12. European Member States
Commitment
All member states to transition towards Open
Science (council conclusion May 2016)
Open access the default by 2020
Research data from publically funded projects
a public good
Data management standard scientific practice
DMPs obilgatory
Follow FAIR principles
13. Libraries enabling Open Science
“We believe that the move towards openness will
lead to increased transparency, better quality
research, a higher level of citizen engagement,
and will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery
through the facilitation of data-driven innovation.”
http://libereurope.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/LIBER_Statement-on-
open-science-final.pdf
18. Elsevier TDM Policy
• Access through API only
• Text only- no images, tables
• Research must register details
• Click-through licence
• Terms can change any time
• Reproducibility of results
19. 1. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WAS NOT
DESIGNED TO REGULATE THE FREE
FLOW OF FACTS, DATA AND IDEAS,
BUT HAS AS A KEY OBJECTIVE THE
PROMOTION OF RESEARCH ACTIVITY
20. Ifs, Ands, or Buts
Publications
Research data
Data Infrastructure
Tools & software
?Data management plans should be open
?Copyright flexible enough to adapt to
capabilities of digital technology
?Access to data about publically funded
research
21. Open Science is Global
Knowledge as a public good
Open data by default
Access via publically owned infrastructure
Access to digital technologies
Data literacy
Closing the citizen science gap
Discoverability (metadata)
It should be an ecosystem of sharing and collaboration, of re use and redistribution.
Open Science is difficult to define, but here is a definition from the FOSTER project: a project on open science training.
Shared as early as possible
Open unless…
“Open science is the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as is practical in the discovery process.” Michael Nielsen
LIBER was one of those respondents. In fact we released a statement recognising the importance of open science and calling on the Commission to support 5 key enablers of open science: policy and leadership (roadmaps for open data, coordination of clear policy), advocacy and recognition (promoting open science and recognising contributions, law reform to address contradiction in copyright law, infrastructure (particularly interoperability), roles and skills (training, education, involvement of stakeholders).
The strongest driver identified behind open science was the availability of digital technologies. Interestingly citizen science was viewed as the weakest driver.
Open and community driven
Not sufficient to provide technical infrastructure
Skills and training
Local support
Incentivise Open Science
Commons
AGREES that the results of publicly funded research should be made available in an as open as possible manner and ACKNOWLEDGES that unnecessary legal, organisational and financial barriers to access results of publicly funded research should be removed as much as possible and appropriate in order to attain optimal knowledge sharing, taking into account when necessary the need for exploitation of results; ENCOURAGES the Commission and Member States to further engage with third countries in order to accelerate the transition process to open science and to ensure mutual benefits regarding open access to scientific publications and optimal reuse of research data in a global context.
“as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
AGREES that the results of publicly funded research should be made available in an as open as possible manner and ACKNOWLEDGES that unnecessary legal, organisational and financial barriers to access results of publicly funded research should be removed as much as possible and appropriate in order to attain optimal knowledge sharing, taking into account when necessary the need for exploitation of results; ENCOURAGES the Commission and Member States to further engage with third countries in order to accelerate the transition process to open science and to ensure mutual benefits regarding open access to scientific publications and optimal reuse of research data in a global context.
“as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
As I said, representing libraries and being a librarian myself I have a bias in that I believe that libraries have a key role in enabling open science, starting with advocacy and moving towards supporting practice, developing infra and standards, and providing access to tools. I don’t see how any other stakeholder can fill this space in a coherent way
Crosstab n:
Training colleagues on RDS: (n=95)
Discussing RDS with others (n=95)
Provide support for finding/citing data (n=101)
ID datasets (n=104)
Prepare data (n=99)
Create/transform meta/data (n=103)
The free flow of information and ideas is an essential human right4. It is a catalyst for the production of human knowledge, which underpins welfare and prosperity. Societies around the world have chosen to protect certain limited rights in intellectual property as incentives both to innovation and the dissemination of knowledge. Intellectual property law was never intended to cover facts, ideas and pure data. However the modern application of intellectual property law is increasingly becoming an obstacle to knowledge creation and dissemination that use even these most simple building blocks of knowledge.
In some countries, copyright law5 in particular has been interpreted to restrict the ability to apply computer reading and analysis to otherwise legally-available content. Other legislative frameworks such as patent law and database law may have a similar impact. When intellectual property law allows content to be read and analysed manually by humans but not by their machines, it has failed its original purposes.