The open research and scholarly publishing landscape is constantly evolving. From new funder initiatives to government-led policies, efforts to make open research practices the norm are gaining momentum worldwide. In Europe, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), and Plan S have made significant strides in this area. Here, we take a look at some recent advances in open research and scholarly publishing, and how Open Research Europe supports this changing landscape.
A focus on open science
The Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union has identified research and innovation as a key focus in its programme for European competitiveness.
Open exchange of knowledge and data is essential to advancing the pace of research and discovery. The Presidency outlined various priorities in this area, including:
- The need for increased access to research infrastructures, and to their data and services, for researchers, businesses, and society at large.
- The need to make as many research stages and tools as freely available online as possible, and to address existing challenges around costs, skills, and merits of doing so.
- The need to address questions around the security and protection of research data.
- The need to address questions around which actors have intellectual property rights over publications and research findings, and how actors’ knowledge and strategic use of those rights can be promoted.
As a result, the Presidency has committed to accelerating open research throughout Europe and improving scholarly publishing practices.
“Research and innovation are […] prerequisites for tackling crises and societal challenges, ensuring security and prosperity for the citizens of Europe and implementing the green and digital transitions. The Presidency will work to support measures that promote open exchange of knowledge and data within the European Research Area, increase knowledge valorisation in our societies, accelerate the transition to open science and allow increased access to research infrastructures.”
The Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union Programme
Putting this focus into action
The Swedish Presidency has accelerated this transition to open science within the European Research Area and reshaping the scholarly publishing ecosystem .
An Informal Meeting of Competitiveness Ministers took place in early February, and ministers responsible for research hosted two policy debates on:
- Maximizing the use and benefit of data from research infrastructures
- Open access to scientific publications by strengthening high-quality, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing
As a result, the ‘Council Conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing’, published in May 2023, stated that “immediate and unrestricted open access should be the norm in publishing research involving public funds”.
Additionally, ministers called for the Commission and Member States to “support policies towards a scholarly publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers.”
In order to achieve this ambition, the Council Conclusions encourage:
- Development of national open access policies and guidelines to make scholarly publications immediately openly accessible under open licences.
- Investment in interoperable digital infrastructure, tools, and capacities to support more efficient and effective scholarly publishing.
- Continued support for some publication formats, such as monographs, books, and long-text formats, especially in humanities and social sciences fields, while allowing for a diverse range of open access digital formats to co-exist.
- Increased support for non-profit scholarly open access publishing models with no dependence on APCs, including encouraging Member States to support the Open Research Europe platform in this goal.
- Developing mutual learning exercises at Member State and EC level to promote open peer review practices, improve transparency of peer review, and give recognition to researchers for involvement in peer review.
- Introducing secondary publication rights by Member States in national copyright legislation to enable open access to publications involving public funds, and proposing measures at the EU level to remove barriers to and reuse of publicly funded publications, results, and data.
- Continued reform of research assessment, including the endorsement of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) and similar initiatives
- Increasing the levels of training and materials available to support researchers in applying open science principles, understanding intellectual property rights, and recognizing questionable, deceptive, and low-quality publishing practices.
- Encouraging the development of qualitative and quantitative indicators to monitor progress towards open science in member states and at the EC level.
Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA)
Another key development in the scholarly publishing landscape has been the formation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). This initiative has gained widespread endorsement from key stakeholders including universities and funders across Europe, with over 500 signatures collected since it opened in September 2022.
CoARA aims to address problems in how research is assessed, encouraging a shift away from assessment based on a narrow set of indicators, such as quantity of publications or perceived journal prestige.
Instead, CoARA supports placing value on the diversity of outputs that researchers produce, as well as the variety of activities and practices that researchers undertake, such as mentoring and peer review.
Is your institution a signatory of CoARA or willing to lend its support? Find the full list of CoARA signatures here, or sign up in support here!
Open Research Europe is committed to supporting CoARA, and one of our Advisory Board members, Toma Susi, has been elected to the first CoARA Steering Board.
Plan S and cOAlition S
cOAlition S and the Plan S Principles were established in 2018 to deliver full and immediate Open Access by the end of 2024, in collaboration with the European Commission and European Research Council.
In recent months, cOAlition S has continued to put the Plan S Principles into action.
Firstly, cOAlition S officially joined the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) at the end of 2022, in line with the Plan S Principle 10. The group also held a workshop to formulate a variety of proposals to address global inequities in fee-based open access publishing.
In addition, it confirmed the end of its financial support for transformative arrangements after 2024, and outlined ongoing work over the next few months to consider alternative scholarly publishing ecosystems and the role that funders can play in this in the Plan S 2022 Annual Report.
The role of Open Research Europe
Open Research Europe has operated in compliance with a number of these initiatives since its inception.
Open Research Europe was identified as an example of the successful implementation of Plan S in the 2022 Annual Report, and the May 2023 Council conclusions “encourage Member States to support the pilot programme Open Research Europe (to create a large-scale open access research publishing service).”
Some of the ways in which Open Research Europe supports these latest developments include:
- Its Open Access publishing model, with APCs covered by the European Commission for all eligible researchers.
- Supporting multiple article types in recognition of diverse research outputs.
- Focusing on the soundness of science and article-level metrics over the perceived novelty of research and Journal Impact Factors.
- Providing full transparency across the model, from open peer review processes to mandatory open data policies.
- Recognizing peer reviewers’ contributions, with all reviewer names and reports available for the community to read and cite.
