To mark the two-year anniversary of Open Research Europe – the innovative open access publishing venue launched by the European Commission (EC) to support Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, Euratom, and COST Action funded researchers – our Community Gateway Advisors reflect on what Open Research Europe means for researchers, the future direction of scholarly publishing and open research, and how Open Research Europe can continue to meet changing needs.
Community Gateways form a central part of Open Research Europe, providing dedicated hubs that bring together all content related to a specific area of research, from Animal and Dairy Science to Sociology and Transport.
What do you think are some of the proudest achievements of Open Research Europe since its launch?
Prof Mangala Srinivas (Medical Biotechnology Community Gateway): That it exists! The launch of an open access publishing venue by the European Commission is a great achievement.
Dr Katalin Solymosi (Cell, Molecular, and Structural Biology Community Gateway): I agree – I think the most important fact is that the European Commission decided to provide funding for an interactive publishing platform for the researchers who win its highly competitive research, development, and innovation grants.
How can Open Research Europe build on its success and achieve widespread adoption?
Dr Win Cowger (Earth and Environmental Sciences Community Gateway): From where I’m standing, Open Research Europe is doing all the right things and it will just take time and perseverance to get other researchers to fully embrace the publishing model that Open Research Europe is putting forward. In the end, I believe it must win because it is a better model of science.
Prof Mangala Srinivas (Medical Biotechnology Community Gateway): I agree – currently, not everyone is aware of the platform, so Open Research Europe needs to be tenacious and keep building awareness for a few more years until it becomes more widely known and accepted.
Prof Paul Cairney (Political Science Community Gateway): For me, I think, the next stage is to demonstrate to more researchers that they can fulfil their wider research and career ambitions with Open Research Europe. This means moving away from the idea that the publication venue determines the value and impact of research (such as a journal with a high impact factor), and placing more value on the research itself, which Open Research Europe is already supporting.
Prof Man-yee Kan (Sociology Community Gateway): I think now that Open Research Europe is indexed by major citation databases, such as PubMed and Scopus, this will really help to build the academic ranking of the platform and encourage more uptake among researchers.
Professor Marcel Swart (Inorganic Chemistry Community Gateway): I think it’s key to keep engaging with the community and encouraging them to send their EU-funded research results to it, for example through presenting at conferences, visits to research institutes etc. Eventually, Open Research Europe should be seen as a prestigious platform, and publishing with the platform should be seen as a great achievement.
Why do you feel it’s important for researchers to engage with Open Research Europe?
Dr Win Cowger (Earth and Environmental Sciences Community Gateway): For me, it’s quite simple – to co-create the future of publishing that we all want to see.
Dr Afroditi Anagnostopoulou (Transport Community Gateway): I think it’s important that researchers are engaged with Open Research Europe to enhance the impact of their work. Open Research Europe can support researchers’ visibility within the EU research community and across different scientific disciplines.
Professor Marcel Swart (Inorganic Chemistry Community Gateway): I think the ability to publish open data alongside the manuscript with a prestigious platform is the main reason, and being able to do this without having to use grant funds for an APC.
Can initiatives like Open Research Europe play a role in advancing open research more generally?
Dr Win Cowger (Earth and Environmental Sciences Community Gateway): Definitely. Publishing with Open Research Europe ensures transparency in the review process and improved access to the latest findings, which is key to the open research movement.
Prof Mangala Srinivas (Medical Biotechnology Community Gateway): Without a doubt. Without suitable platforms like Open Research Europe, how can the movement continue?
Prof Man-yee Kan (Sociology Community Gateway): Definitely. My field, sociology, is about daily lives, people, and society. The knowledge and research outputs from this should, by nature, be shared widely and openly to the public. The aim of sociology is to understand what society is like and how to improve it, so publishing outputs openly on platforms like Open Research Europe is key.
In your opinion, what are the most important aspects of the Open Research Europe model for researchers?
Prof Paul Cairney (Political Science Community Gateway): The Open Research Europe publishing model is ideal for the rapid publication of innovative ideas. European Commission grant recipients have a purpose-built way to communicate their research, in a way that is not available in traditional journals.
Dr Afroditi Anagnostopoulou (Transport Community Gateway): Transparent peer review is the most important aspect for me. It not only promotes reviewers’ accountability, but authors also receive more constructive feedback.
Dr Katalin Solymosi (Cell, Molecular, and Structural Biology Community Gateway): I think the fact that Open Research Europe is a fully open platform is the most important aspect for me. This way, both the public and researchers can immediately get access to the latest EC-financed scientific results, which enhances the visibility, transparency, and impact of science. The fact that there is no publication cost associated with the platform for researchers is also highly positive.
Prof Joerg Osterrieder (Business and Economics Community Gateway): For me, the fact that all articles are peer-reviewed, that articles are published faster than in traditional journals, and the responsive peer-review process, are all key elements.
Dr Win Cowger (Earth and Environmental Sciences Community Gateway): I accepted the invitation to join Open Research Europe for three main reasons – the fact that it removed publication fee barriers for many researchers, that it makes research more accessible, and that studies are not assessed based on novelty.
Prof Mangala Srinivas (Medical Biotechnology Community Gateway): For me, the open peer review process and the fact that there is no publishing fee are very important. Open Research also Europe allows for the publication of articles that would not traditionally be supported, such as orphan data and methods papers.
Professor Marcel Swart (Inorganic Chemistry Community Gateway): I think the fact that open data and open access go hand-in-hand in one platform is really important, and that the service is paid for by the European Commission (i.e. no APC fee to be paid from the project’s budget).
How does Open Research Europe fit into the current academic publishing landscape?
Dr Katalin Solymosi (Cell, Molecular, and Structural Biology Community Gateway): Open Research Europe is a novel publishing platform, which clearly shows, in an inspiring way, that we need out-of-the-box thinking to redraw the global publishing landscape. This can help to achieve greater transparency in a more sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and cost-efficient way than the current models of academic publishing.
Prof Paul Cairney (Political Science Community Gateway): Open Research Europe has advantages over old and new publishing models. It overcomes the problems of closed access journals that juggle a confusing mix of open and closed articles in the same volume and competes well with open access journals that charge high APCs by removing author fees for EC grantees. Overall, it should become a routine vehicle for EC-funded researchers, even if they also need to pursue those other routes.
Prof Joerg Osterrieder (Business and Economics Community Gateway): I think Open Research Europe is the future of the publishing model – more transparent, faster, and open access.
Dr Katalin Solymosi (Cell, Molecular, and Structural Biology Community Gateway): It’s quite unique in that it provides novel publication formats that are not found in ‘conventional’ academic publishing models (e.g. publishing codes or programs). While not all eligible researchers know or recognize Open Research Europe yet, it may take on a more important role after the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is implemented throughout Europe and the impact-factor driven publication model no longer dominates.
Prof Man-yee Kan (Sociology Community Gateway): Open Research Europe is a valuable channel of open access publishing. Other newly established open access journals usually charge a high submission fee, whereas Open Research Europe is free for EC grantees, and the review process remains rigorous and transparent.
What would you like to see in open science & open research in the coming years and how does Open Research Europe fit into this?
Dr Afroditi Anagnostopoulou (Transport Community Gateway): Greater emphasis on data sharing will be key, especially to support the re-use of data. Open Research Europe already supports this by providing open and free access to results and all corresponding data, which can promote inter- and multi-disciplinary collaborations, as well as a specific data-focused article type.
Prof Joerg Osterrieder (Business and Economics Community Gateway): For me, I’d like to see more transparency in the peer review process across the open research landscape, both in terms of reviewer information and review reports. Both of these are already supported by Open Research Europe.
Dr Katalin Solymosi (Cell, Molecular, and Structural Biology Community Gateway): I would like to see growth of new publishing platforms using the Diamond Open Access model. I think this is the only way we can achieve equitable, sustainable, unbiased, and inclusive global publishing, in which scientific excellence is the only criterium for publication and all researchers have equal chances to share their results. These platforms would benefit from the volunteer work of the scientific community (editors, reviewers, and authors), and should be maintained and financed by national or international funding agencies, states, or academic societies (not for profit).
Prof Man-yee Kan (Sociology Community Gateway): I’d like to see open access to knowledge, transparency in research processes, and reproducibility of research findings to become common practices of scientific research. I think researchers can support Open Research Europe in this by submitting their research and data, offering reviewing services, and recommending the platform to their team and colleagues.
Prof Mangala Srinivas (Medical Biotechnology Community Gateway): I think all science has to move towards an open model, although I do not know what the academic publishing world will look like in a few years, given all the changes in recent years. I hope it will be based on models like Open Research Europe rather than existing paid journals with restricted access and hidden reviews. I think Open Research Europe should continue to be integrated with existing tools so that articles are findable, and I would like to see eligibility broadened more widely to support open research further.
Professor Marcel Swart (Inorganic Chemistry Community Gateway): I’d like to see more attention to open data in the coming years across the open science and open research landscape – for instance, through explicit citation of data (through DOIs) in scientific publications. At the moment, it is still mainly the paper that is cited, not the data behind it. Open Research Europe is already supporting progress in open data through its data guidelines.
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