The way to Open Science

Science is broadly understood as collecting, analyzing, publishing, reanalyzing, critiquing, and reusing data. Proponents of open science identify a number of barriers that impede or dissuade the broad dissemination of scientific data. 

These include financial paywalls of for-profit research publishers, restrictions on usage applied by publishers of data, poor formatting of data or use of proprietary software that makes it difficult to re-purpose, and cultural reluctance to publish data for fears of losing control of how the information is used.

One of the main goals of the Open Science movement is the open Access of the research publications and data. In this way, the European University Association (EUA) agreed at its Council meeting on 23 October 2015 on the development of a roadmap to assist European universities in the transition to Open Access (OA). This initiative follows on from a recommendation made by EUA’s Expert Group on Science 2.0/Open Science.

They defined a roadmap that focuses primarily on OA to research publications, as in the broader field of Open Science most progress has been accomplished in this area. It is intended as the first step in a series of initiatives that EUA and its Expert Group are developing to address the most pressing implications of Open Science, including, inter alia, OA to research data, copyright, data protection and text and data mining; new models of evaluation and quality assessment; digital literacy and awareness.

The main objectives of EUA strives to achieve this vision in the next three years by concentrating on the following areas:

· Fostering structured dialogue among all stakeholders – especially scientists, universities, research funding and performing organisations, libraries, politicians and publishers;

· Promoting and supporting the adoption of OA policies, infrastructures and initiatives (repositories, institutional publishing initiatives – both for journals and monographs) by European universities;

· Encouraging the development and establishment of advanced scientific recognition and research assessment systems – including scientometrics and altmetrics, quality evaluation in OA, career progression of scientists and rigorous quality assurance of conventional and novel research outputs;

· Addressing intellectual property rights and copyright policies for various outputs, including publications, research data, learning materials and patents; · Considering alternative and sustainable OA business models;

· Promoting access, use and sharing of research publications and data, including text and data mining (TDM), tailored to different stakeholders, including researchers at different stages in their career;

· Encouraging, supporting and eventually monitoring the establishment of comprehensive standards for institutional OA policies concerning research publications and teaching materials. Priority actions EUA will focus its efforts in the next twelve months

I think it's a very interesting initiative, and necessarily. Nowadays, OpenAccess is a reality that we must take into account, but there are already some issues to make it totally possible, related to the quality of research, paywalls, peer review and so on, but no one denies that Open Access and thus, open Science are the new research models in this digital and globalized world.

Can see more information about the initiative here: