Presentation and analysis of the current responsible open science (OS) policies of selected European countries.

Introduction

This overview will shortly present the existing national open science (OS) public policies in each of the selected countries, namely the European Union MS, Norway and the United Kingdom. This will cover 22 selected national OS public policies implemented in 16 countries. The current state of OS will also be briefly presented for the 10 countries that are currently working on the development and implementation of a national OS public policy. Based on this analysis, specific conclusions are drawn regarding the trends in open science policies.

Analysis of the selected countries

Austria

Austria does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country is however very active in this field. Since 2020 a National Open Science Strategy for Austria is being developed in collaboration between the Open Science Network Austria (OANA) and the national authorities responsible for OS.

Belgium

Belgium has a national OS public policy in place: the Brussels Declaration on Open Access published in 2012. Belgium has therefore the oldest national OS public policy within the analysed countries. The policy focuses on open access (OA). The document is accessible in three languages (French, Dutch and English) and is aiming at providing information to researchers regarding OA, as well as to support OA and the creation of data repositories. The Declaration has a soft mandate and is rather short and not addressing the most recent OS developments. This might explain, why no discipline-related particularity or FAIR Data Principles are mentioned.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria has two national OS public policies in place: the National Plan for the Development of the Open Science Initiative in the Republic of Bulgaria and the National Programme for Stimulation of publishing activity in authoritative international scientific journals and open access to scientific information, both published in 2021. These policies address OS through a soft mandate, clearly support data repositories, and are only available in Bulgarian. The main topic addressed are the transition towards a research environment where OS is thedefault practice. The national plan makes an explicit mention of FAIR Data Principles and citizen science (CS), and provides a discipline-related understanding. From the selected responsible aspects, the national programme does only address the use of data repository.

Croatia

Croatia does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country is however very active within the OA frameworks with multiple publications and policies from the national authorities and the scientific community, supporting and mandating further compliance with OA practices.

Cyprus

Cyprus has a national OS public policy in place: the National Policy of the Republic of Cyprus for Open Access to Scientific Information, published in 2016. The policy focuses on OA, is available in English and encourages researchers to publish in suitable data repositories. The policy had a soft mandate and hope to create the conditions and environment for OA, in accordance and line with the relevant EU OA´ framework.

Czech Republic

Czech Republic has two national OS public policies in place: the National Strategy on Open Access to Scientific Information of the Czech Republic for 2017-2020 and the Action Plan for Implantation of the National Strategy on Open Access to Scientific Information of the Czech Republic for 2017-2020, published respectively in 2017 and 2019. Both documents have a soft mandate and focus on OA. The policies are to be understood together, since the Action Plan is aiming at implementing the National Strategy. They are both available only in Czech and mention the use of repositories. Due to the lack of language availability, it has not been possible to determine if these documents have a discipline-related perspective.

Denmark

Denmark has a national OS public policy in place: the Denmark´s Strategy for Open Access published in 2018. The document, which is available in English, addresses OA with a soft mandate and supports the use of data repositories. The national strategy is aiming for 2025 to guarantee OA practices for research publication from Danish research institutions.

Estonia

Estonia does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country is nonetheless very active in OS with multiple ongoing processes aiming at developing some national framework for OS. The Organisation of Research and Development Act in particular is currently being prepared by the Ministry of Education and Research and it will include a national framework for OS. The policy should be presented and approved in 2023. Furthermore, multiple national public policies already mention and support OA and OS.

Finland

Finland has three national OS public policies in place: the Open access to scholarly publication. National Policy and executive plan by the research community in Finland for 2020-2025; the Open education and educational resources. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021-2025; and the Open research data and methods. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021-2025, published respectively in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The policies have been published as a part of a global strategy on OA by the national authorities in Finland. They have a hard mandate, are focusing on OA and are available in English. They are aiming at using OA as default in respect of the motto “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. The three documents clearly support the use of data repositories, the 2020 and 2021´s policies also address discipline-related perspective, and the 2021´s policy explicitly mentions FAIR Data Principles and RI.

France

France has two national OS public policies in place: the First National Plan for Open Science and the Second National Plan for Open Science 2021-2024, published in 2018 and 2021 respectively. These two national plans are to be understood in a continuity and as a progressive improvement. The two documents are available in English, focus on OS and have a hard mandate. And they both address the same selected responsible aspects, namely clearly mentioning the FAIR Data Principles, the use of data repositories, CS and discipline-related perspectives. Their major goals, beside the support and generalisation of OA and for OS to become the default practice, is also to take an active part in the European and international OS dynamics.

Germany

Germany has two national OS public policies in place: the Open Access in Germany and the Research Data Action Plan published in 2016 and 2020 respectively. While none of these documents are available in English, both have a soft mandate. Furthermore, if the two documents address OA, the main focus on the 2020´s Research Data Action Plan is targeting mainly the data management. The action plan published in 2020 explicitly mentions FAIR Data Principles, the use of data repositories and addresses discipline-related perspective. The 2016´s document however do not explicitly include any of the aspects selected as responsible in this report.

Greece

Greece does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. Nevertheless, the country is very active and does currently have two national initiatives for OS, one aiming at developing a National Open Science Plan.

Hungary

Hungary does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The national authorities are however very active and vocal in their support for further involvement in OS with strategies and a position paper on OS already published.

Ireland

Ireland has a national OS public policy in place: the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment published in 2019. The policy focuses on OS and has been published in English. The national framework has a hard mandate and addresses all aspects defined in this report as responsible – it mentions FAIR, RE/RI, repositories, CS, and discipline-related particularities. It aims at aligning with the existing EC policy on OS.

Italy

Italy has a national OS public policy in place: the National Programme for Research 2021-2027 published in 2021. The policy focuses on OS and is only available in Italian. Beside the absence of English version, the national programme addresses all the aspects defined in this report as responsible – it mentions FAIR, RE/RI, repositories, CS, and discipline-related particularities. The document presents the National Plan for Open Science, that should be issued as a standalone document in the future. Due to the lack of English translation, it has not been possible to determine if the policy has a soft or hard mandate.

Latvia

Latvia does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The national authorities are nonetheless working on a National Open Science Strategy - currently under reviewing, to be approved in 2022.

Lithuania

Lithuania does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, the national authority responsible for OS in Lithuania, is however currently developing a national Open Access/Open Science policy.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg has a national OS public policy in place: the National Policy on Open Access published in 2015. The policy focuses on OA and is available in English. The hard mandate´s document addresses discipline-related perspective and supports the use of data repositories and responsible OA practices. The national policy aims at aligning with the EU framework on OA, particularly the EC´s Recommendations on Access to and Preservation of Scientistic Information and the EC´s Communication Towards better access to scientific information.

Malta

Malta does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. Nevertheless, the main national institutions, involved in OS are currently working on the development of a National Open Access Policy.

Netherlands

The Netherlands has a national OS public policy in place: the National Plan Open Science published in 2017. The policy focuses on OS and is available in English. The national plan has a soft mandate and addresses all the aspects defined in this report as responsible – it mentions FAIR, RE/RI, repositories, CS, and discipline related particularities. Its objectives are the promotion of OA to scientific publications for their optimal use and reuse, as well as the adaptation of the evaluation and award systems to the OS framework.

Norway

Norway has a national OS public policy in place: the National Strategy on access to and sharing of research data published in 2017. The policy focuses on OA and is available in English. The policy has a hard mandate and addresses the use of data repositories. Research data should be “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.

Poland

Poland does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country is nonetheless active in OS. In 2018, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education published for instance a report regarding the implementation of an OA policy in the country.

Portugal

Portugal does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The national authorities are, however, currently working on the development of a National Policy for Open Science.

Romania

Romania does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. Nevertheless, the country remains active in OS with publications supporting OS. The national authorities responsible for OS are collaborating since 2019 on the development of a national strategic framework on OS.

Slovakia

Slovakia has a national OS public policy in place: the National Strategy for Open Science 2021-2028, published in 2021. The policy is focusing on OS and is available in English. The national strategy has a soft mandate and addresses all the aspects defined in this report as responsible – it mentions FAIR, RE/RI, repositories, CS, and discipline-related particularities. Its objectives cover OA´s infrastructures and practices, but also intellectual property rights and OS financing and education.

Slovenia

Slovenia has a national OS public policy in place: the National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Slovenia 2015-2020 published in 2015. The national strategy focuses on OA, has a hard mandate and is available in English. The document explicitly mention the use of repositories and CS. It establishes OA as default, provides recommendations, and was implemented by an Action Plan in 2017.

Spain

Spain has a national OS public policy in place: the State Plan for Research, Development and Innovation 2017-2020 published in 2018. The policy focuses on OA and is only available in Spanish. The FAIR Data Principles, research ethic, CS, as well as repositories are explicitly addressed in the policy, that also has a discipline-related perspective. The policy has a soft mandate and support the availability of publicly funded research data to be published in OA. The policy also acknowledges the security, confidentiality and commercial challenges of OA, in accordance with the motto “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.

Sweden

Sweden does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country is however active in OS with national and institutional publications supporting OA. Furthermore, in 2017, the national authorities assigned the main institutional organisation active in OS to coordinate the national implementation of OA.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom does not currently have a national OS public policy in place. The country´s research environment is quite specific due to the country political and administrative organisation. The authority and mandate on OS is therefore in the hands of the four UK higher education funding bodies in each nations: the UK Research and Innovation, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish Funding Council and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

This report has provided us with in-depth insights of the current situation of OS in Europe and the overview equipped us with a mapping of selected OS public policies from which we were able to draw conclusions. Certainly, it remains impossible to provide overall generalities in regard of such a wide and various range of countries and policies on OS. But despite these individual particularities, some trends can be determined.

The first and probably the clearer one is that OS is strongly supported and progressing in Europe. All of the selected countries are indeed involved in OS, the majority of them have national OS public policies in place, and the countries that do not are mostly in the process of developing one. This support and involvement is also to be seen in the time context. The growing involvement and support for OS in Europe is indeed quite recent. The role of the EU is also to be emphasised in this regard, since the EU initiatives, statements and policies on OS have been widely taken into account in the development of national OS public policies. It seems indeed that the EU involvement in OS increases the chances for the implementation of OS at the national level.

The second tendency that has already been presented, are the clear and thorough national and regional characteristics, with some significant particularities when it comes to strategies or existing policies. These strategies and policies are therefore to be understand and approached taking in consideration these particularities, in terms of national strategies, research environments and legislation. A ´responsible´ policy in a given country could, for instance, not be perceived as such in another one. To conclude, OS has in the recent years extensively grown in Europe´s research environment, with a broad involvement from all actors involved, from the supranational level with the EU as the main actor, to the national, regional, institutional and citizen level. This rather recent process has furthermore found itself becoming more and more relevant in the current global context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has demonstrated the advantages provided by OS.

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This passage is part of D5.1: Report on existing policies and guidelines written by Mathieu Rochambeau, Teodora Konach.