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:
