The Transformation of the Green Road to Open Access[v1] | Preprints

Abstract:  (1) Background: The 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative recommended on self-archiving of scientific articles in open repositories as the “green road” to open access. Twenty years later, only one part of the researchers deposits their publications in open repositories; moreover, one part of the repositories’ content is not based on self-archived deposits but on mediated nonfaculty contributions. The purpose of the paper is to provide more empirical evidence on this situation and to assess the impact on the future of the green road. (2) Methods: We analyzed the contributions on the French national HAL repository from more than 1,000 laboratories affiliated to the ten most important French research universities, with a focus on 2020, representing 14,023 contributor accounts and 166,939 deposits. (3) Results: We identified seven different types of contributor accounts, including deposits from nonfaculty staff and import flows from other platforms. Mediated nonfaculty contribution accounts for at least 48% of the deposits. We also identified difference between institutions and disciplines. (4) Conclusions: Our empirical results reveal a transformation of open repositories from self-archiving and direct scientific communication towards research information management. Repositories like HAL are somewhere in the middle of the process. The paper describes data quality as the main issue and major challenge of this transformation.

 

Mapping contemporary “research on research” and “science studies”: how new methods change the traditional academic landscape and inform public open science policies

Abstract:  One of the ambitions outlined by France’s second National Plan for Open Science (July 2021), was to create an Open Science Lab dedicated to developing “research on research” with a focus on open science and with the objective to inform French public policy decisions. As part of the groundwork for setting up this Lab, the French Committee for Open Science called for an exploratory study to better understand the international scope and context of “research on research” (RoR), and its connections with open science as well as other research currently being carried out in metascience, science of science, and science and technology studies.

Far from presenting a static landscape, the study found that while some research on science and scientific communities are based on well-established, pre-existing academic fields and methods, other more recent trends (metascience, metaresearch, RoR, etc.) have adopted a prescriptive commitment to fostering better and more open science. It highlights the debates contemporary research on research and science is fueling around key issues such as reproducibility, evidence-based policy, integrity and inclusivity. It also echos some community-issued concerns about “reinventing the wheel” when it comes to studying science, scientific communities and their productions.

Publication of the French National Fund for Open Science’s activity report

The French National Fund for Open Science’s first activity report provides a summary of the work carried out over the 2019-2021 period covered by the first National Plan for Open Science.

The National Fund for Open Science (FNSO) set up in 2019 is one of the first major achievements deriving from the First French Plan for Open Science. It is a scientific interest group managed by the CNRS’s Open Research Data Department. Its governance has been entrusted to a Steering Committee made up of the heads of France’s main higher education and research institutions and chaired by Claire Giry, the Director General of Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.

French National Fund for Open Science activity report

“The first report on the French National Fund for Open Science (FNSO) activities covers the period 2020-2021.

After reminding us of the organisation and the functioning of the scientific interest group, the origin and the amount of the financial resources, the activity report presents the results of its actions for the period. In order to financially sustain projects and initiatives contributing to the development of open science, the FNSO has set up two key actions: calls for projects, where projects are financed after a selection process, and direct financial support to initiatives structuring the open science landscape. These actions are complemented by dedicated funding.

The activity report concludes with the commitments of the FNSO for the period 2022-2023…”

Does grant funding foster research impact? Evidence from France*

Abstract:  Over the last fifteen years, European countries have increasingly relied on competitive grants to allocate research funding, replacing the more traditional block funding model. Policymakers are interested in assessing the effectiveness of the grant funding model in producing impactful research. However, the literature aiming to quantify the effect of grants on the resulting research’s impact is scant. In the French context, we compare the impact of scientific articles resulting from the support of competitive grants from the main national funding agency with the impact of articles not supported by grants. We rely on publication acknowledgments to retrieve funding information and on citation data to assess the articles’ impact. We find that articles supported by competitive grants receive more citations than articles not supported by grants in the long run, while the difference is not statistically significant in the short run. We find heterogeneity in the effect of grant funding on citations across fields.

Reproducibility in therapeutic research | ReITheR

“ReiTheR is a meta-research project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (reference number ANR-17-CE-36-0010-01). Some ancillary projects were supported by Région Bretagne and Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale and are also presented on this website. The group now collaborates with the Committee for Open Science to develop clinical trial data sharing plans. A new project is funded by the French Ministry of Health (Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique: Esketamine for “treatment resistant depression”: an Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis: ESK-T-Dep)….”

Release of the English Version of the Rights Retention Strategy Guide

The Mettre en œuvre la stratégie de non-cession des droits sur les publications scientifiques a tool for researchers is now also available in English : Implementing the rights retention strategy for scientific publications.

The rights retention strategy is part of France’s Second National Plan for Open Science. The strategy’s conclusions on the evaluation of research and the implementation of open science are also supported by the Council of the European Union. Finally, it enables researchers to align with certain funding agencies’ open science policies.

Ouvrir la Science – Open Science library

“The guide explains the rights retention strategy, its benefits for the researcher and the operational details of its application. It also provides an FAQ that addresses the main questions about choosing licenses, the options available at the various stages of publication, and how to manage relationships with publishers….”

Pourret (2022) Stop paying to be published Open Access –  a French perspective | European Science Editing

Pourret O (2022) Stop paying to be published Open Access –  a French perspective. European Science Editing 48: e90113. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2022.e90113

 

 

The National Fund for Open Science (FNSO) launches its call for projects on open scientific and scholarly publishing

The call for projects is open until February 22, 2023. It benefits from a co-funding from the French National Research Agency on projects that fall under the diamond publishing model.

The call for projects is aimed at research infrastructures included in the national roadmap for research infrastructures, structures that publish scientific journals or books, support centers for publishing activities, and platforms for the dissemination of scientific publications.

Fully funded Early Career Researcher Position in Paris on Open Data Licensing | EURAXESS

“This fully funded Early Career Researcher position is part of the EU Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie ITN project entitled “ODECO: Towards a Sustainable Open Data ECOsystem” (see www.odeco-research.eu)….

Bringing together different sectors (research, private sector, government, non-profit) and different perspectives (public administration, law, business, engineering), ODECO aims to address the central challenge of realizing a user driven, circular and inclusive open data ecosystem. Through its novel research and training programme, ODECO will provide early-stage researchers with relevant open data knowledge, skills and research experience.

The Early Career Research position on “Open Licensing of Non-Government Data” will design new legal instruments to include private actors as producers and sharers of (open) data and data generated by private companies and users on private platforms, by:

– Investigating from a legal perspective novel value distribution and incentive mechanisms and design how a new sustainable distribution of value in the open data ecosystem may be implemented in licenses based on alternative values defined in collaboration with other PhDs and members of the ODECO project teams working in other disciplines.

– Investigating whether commons-based approaches can be developed to openly license commercial data and data volunteered by citizens on public, commons, and private platforms, and ported from other environments (e.g., medical and microbial commons, data pools).

– Exploring legal mechanisms that will facilitate and incentivise the release of non-government data as open data in open data commons, data pools or data collaboratives) as well as private and user-generated data contributed to public and private platforms (e.g., social media).

– Ensuring compatibility between commercial, and individual (data protection, privacy and sharing) interests….”

Home | French RRS Monitor

“The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is an initiative from a consortium of research funders, the Coaliation S, which promote immediate open access without requiring payment to publish (no Article Processing Charge). The RRS is a way to publish in open access without paying.

This website describe publications in the french repository HAL, where the Right Retention Strategy has been applied….”

Coming soon: the next phase of copyright maximalism – destroying the public domain – Walled Culture

“The public domain is the natural state of creative material. It’s where creations end up once copyright’s monopoly has expired. Crucially, it is the quid pro quo for that monopoly. The deal is that the creator of a work is granted a government-enforced intellectual monopoly for a limited period, after which the work enters the public domain for anyone to use for any purpose, including commercial ones. That’s the bargain, but it seems that the copyright maximalists in the French Parliament want to renege on it. Here’s an amendment to a finance bill that was proposed by 75 politicians in the National Assembly a few days ago (translation by DeepL):

The aim of this amendment is to increase aid to artistic creation by setting up a levy on the lucrative commercial use of works in the public domain….

Fortunately, the amendment has been withdrawn – perhaps as a result of the cries of horror from a wide range of organisations and experts. But make no mistake, this will not be a one-off….”