EOSC Symposium 2024 – EOSC Association

“We are happy to announce that the EOSC Symposium 2024 will be held 21-23 October 2024, in Berlin. The EOSC Association, with the support of EOSC Focus, will assume the organisational responsibility for the EOSC Symposium in 2024, which will be a critical event on the path to EOSC post-2027. The EOSC Symposium 2024 will build on the success and momentum established by the 2023 event, organised as in previous years by the EOSC Future project, while also expanding the potential for on-site participation.”

LORDIMAS: A digital maturity assessment tool for regions and cities | data.europa.eu

“To strengthen local and regional authorities with advanced digital capabilities, the Local and Regional Digital Indicators framework (LORDI) introduces LORDIMAS. This transformative digital maturity assessment tool, a product of collaboration with Living-in.EU, was officially unveiled with comprehensive demos during online events in October and the Smart City Expo in Barcelona from November 7-9. LORDIMAS empowers local and regional governments across Europe to assess their digital progress, foster open data sharing and promote more efficient governance….”

Harmonising Zero Embargo initiatives: Challenges in Europe and Beyond – YouTube

“This KR21-LIBER webinar held on 14 November 2023 took a deep dive into the prospect of a zero embargo model by:

? exploring initiatives and barriers to harmonise secondary publishing rights (SPR) legislation; ? examining how SPR legislation can go from a national to an international level so that publicly funded research output will be shared openly and without any embargo period; and, ? providing insights on how SPR can enable the immediate access to research findings, the course of action needed to get there, and identify which stakeholders must act….”

The neglect of equity and inclusion in open science policies of Europe and the Americas | SciELO Preprints

Abstract:  National, international, and organizational Open Science (OS) policies are being formulated to improve and accelerate research through increased transparency, collaboration, and better access to scientific knowledge. Yet, there is mounting concern that OS policies—which are predicated on narrow understandings of openness, accessibility, and objectivity—do not effectively capture the ethos of OS and particularly its goal of making science more collaborative, inclusive, and socially engaged. This study explores how OS is conceptualized in emerging OS policies and to what extent notions of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and public participation are reflected in policy guidelines and recommendations. We use a qualitative document research approach to critically analyze 52 OS policy documents published between January 2020 and December 2022 in Europe and the Americas. Our results show that OS policies overwhelmingly focus on making research outputs publicly accessible, neglecting to advance the two aspects of OS that hold the key to achieving an inclusive and inclusive scientific culture—namely, EDI and public participation. While these concepts are often mentioned and even embraced in OS policy documents, concrete guidance on how they can be promoted in practice is overwhelmingly lacking. Rather than advancing the openness of scientific findings first and promoting EDI and public participation efforts second, we argue that incentives and guidelines must be provided and implemented concurrently to advance the OS movement’s stated goal of making science open to all.

 

The seed of a global federation for Diamond Open Access has been planted – SPARC Europe

“By invitation, SPARC Europe recently attended the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access. Participants reflected on the current diamond OA publishing system and how to develop and sustain a solid scholar-led not-for-profit diamond OA publishing ecosystem. The event created a very fertile ground for discussion by bringing people from across the world, from 75 countries and over 450 organisations speaking in four languages.

As world leaders in this area and our host, Redalyc demonstrated its extraordinary and admirable leadership in OA diamond with its innovative policy, organisation, infrastructure and community.  A strong shared vision, collective services, increasing efficiency and resilience in hard times, capacity-building and collaboration have been crucial to their success. From the summit we also gained a clear view of the work of others worldwide as they spoke to their diamond policies and practices as well as to their aspirations, whilst also highlighting some of the challenges in creating a diamond OA world….”

Brill Launches Transformative Agreement with the University of Salzburg

“As of January 1st, 2024, researchers affiliated with the University of Salzburg can publish in any Brill journal in Open Access, free of charge, thanks to Brill’s new Transformative Agreement with the university. In addition, the agreement gives them access to all of Brill’s 350+ journals across the Humanities, Social Sciences, Law and Biology. The agreement runs for two years. All articles published from January 1, 2024 will benefit from Open Access. Jasmin Lange, Brill’s CPO, comments: “We are proud to further expand our Open Access offering in Austria, building on our longstanding relationship with the University of Salzburg. …Linda Ohrtmann and Andreas Rotheneder from University Library Salzburg state: “We are confident that this new read and publish agreement with Brill will contribute to further promoting Open Access…”

Webinar “Harmonising Zero Embargo initiatives: challenges in Europe and beyond”, Nov 14, 2023 | LIBER Europe

LIBER, in the Knowledge Rights 21 Project (KR21) framework, will host an event on 14 November on efforts to harmonise Zero Embargo initiatives across Europe and beyond. In this webinar, a panel of experts will present the challenges in harmonising Secondary Publishing Rights legislation across Europe and the symbiosis with other instruments, such as the Rights Retention Strategy and the initiative in the US to implement a zero embargo campaign.  

About the event

The overall goal of the webinar is to explore initiatives and barriers to harmonise Secondary Publishing Rights (SPR) legislation. We will explore how legislation can go from a national to an international level so that publicly funded research output will be shared openly and without any embargo period. This webinar gives insight into how Secondary Publishing Rights can enable the immediate access to research findings, the course of needed action to get there, and identify which stakeholders must act.

Each speaker will make a short presentation about their perceived challenges before engaging in an in-depth panel discussion about the harmonisation of legislation for immediate access to scientific knowledge. This will be followed by a 40 minute panel discussion with the opportunity for the audience to engage, question, and share their experiences and perspectives.  

The session is closely related to the KR21 Research on Secondary Publishing Rights and acts as a follow-up event to the project’s webinar on May 4th – available to watch again here. 

Register here to attend.

[…]

 

Co-Designing Diamond Open Access Recommendations and Guidelines for Research Funders, Sponsors, and Donors – Science Europe

Science Europe is organising a co-design process to develop Diamond Open Access recommendations and guidelines for research Funders, Sponsors, and Donors (FSDs). As diamond open access initiatives gather momentum, this co-design process is a timely opportunity for FSD experts to come together and discuss how they can provide effective financial support for diamond open access.

 

LIBER, UNESCO and LA Referencia Webinar Report – Open Science Monitoring in Europe – LIBER Europe

“On 3 October 2023 LIBER, UNESCO and LA Referencia joined forces for a webinar outlining the Open Science monitoring methods and tools currently developed in Europe. The event aimed to introduce several examples of inclusive monitoring of Open Science, in line with the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, to foster the uptake of monitoring frameworks that assess the outputs and impacts of Open Science practices….”

Umbrella Data Management Plans to Integrate FAIR Data: Lessons From the ISIDORe and BY-COVID Consortia for Pandemic Preparedness – Data Science Journal

Abstract:  The Horizon Europe project ISIDORe is dedicated to pandemic preparedness and responsiveness research. It brings together 17 research infrastructures (RIs) and networks to provide a broad range of services to infectious disease researchers. An efficient and structured treatment of data is central to ISIDORe’s aim to furnish seamless access to its multidisciplinary catalogue of services, and to ensure that users’ results are treated FAIRly. ISIDORe therefore requires a data management plan (DMP) covering both access management and research outputs, applicable over a broad range of disciplines, and compatible with the constraints and existing practices of its diverse partners. Here, we describe how, to achieve that aim, we undertook an iterative, step-by-step, process to build a community-approved living document, identifying good practices and processes, on the basis of use cases, presented as proof of concepts. International fora such as the RDA and EOSC, and primarily the BY-COVID project, furnished registries, tools and online data platforms, as well as standards, and the support of data scientists. Together, these elements provide a path for building an umbrella, FAIR-compliant DMP, aligned as fully as possible with FAIR principles, which could also be applied as a framework for data management harmonisation in other large-scale, challenge-driven projects. Finally, we discuss how data management and reuse can be further improved through the use of knowledge models when writing DMPs and, how, in the future, an inter-RI network of data stewards could contribute to the establishment of a community of practice, to be integrated subsequently into planned trans-RI competence centres.

Key Exploitable Results of Skills3EOSC

“The project will directly support EOSC Partnership Specific Objective 1.2. Professional data stewards are available in research-performing organisations in Europe to support Open Science, measured through two specific KPIs

KPI (2025) European curricula for data stewards are defined
KPI (2027) All research done by EOSC Association members is supported by professional data stewards.

Skills4EOSC actions address the three gaps identified in the EOSC SRIA concerning skills and training: a lack of Open Science and data expertise, a lack of clearly defined data professional profiles and career paths for these roles, and fragmentation in training resources….”

Open Science Monitoring in Europe

“LIBER has announced that they will hold a joint webinar together with UNESCO and LA Referencia on Tuesday 3rd October (16:00 CEST). The event – entitled Open Science Monitoring in Europe: A LIBER, UNESCO and LA Referencia Webinar – is aimed at providing a state-of-the art analysis of the Open Science monitoring methods and tools currently developed in Europe….

The webinar will take inspiration from the similarities between Latin American and European approaches to Open Access (see this study in English and in Spanish) Attendees will gain insights for developing Open Science monitoring methods, criteria, sources and tools.

The main benefits for attendees will be:

Awareness of Open Science monitoring implementation momentum.
Knowledge of the UNESCO vision of Open Science monitoring and the tools needed to follow the implementation and fulfilment of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
An introduction to the state-of-the-art  monitoring methods and tools currently developed in Europe for measuring Open Science progress and actions (OpenAIRE monitoring vision, challenges, tools and methods; France and Finland’s experiences with monitoring national and institutional frameworks and tools.)
An international alignment of reproducible methods, measurement criteria, tools and practices for assessing and monitoring Open Science progress.
Opportunities to develop partnerships, collaborations and networking between regions and/or countries.
Opportunities to develop their personal, institutional, and national network(s)….”

EU council ‘no pay’ publishing model is realistic – Olivier Pourret

“According to Katharine Sanderson, “publishing-industry representatives warn” that May’s EU Council call for a “no pay” academic publishing model is “unrealistic and lack[ing] detail”. However, the proposal is already being implemented via several approaches:…

Many of these are already supported directly by institutions, governments, or private funders, and they are here to stay. 

 

It is up to us, researchers and policy makers, to make sure we support “no pay” solutions where they exist. Scientific knowledge is a public good, and it should be treated as such.”

Contribute to the PALOMERA Survey on Open Access Book Policies – LIBER Europe

“The PALOMERA Project (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) focuses on ensuring that academic books and monographs are not neglected in Open Science and Open Access (OA) policies. The project is conducting a survey on the needs, obstacles and challenges of policy-making for open access books. LIBER, as partners in the project, encourage library stakeholders and the wider research community to take part in the survey to help provide actionable recommendations for the development of open access book policies on the European, national and institutional level….”

COAR welcomes the Council of EU Conclusions on High-quality, Transparent, Open, Trustworthy and Equitable Scholarly Publishing – COAR

“As a major voice for repositories at the international level, COAR joins other organizations in welcoming the Council of European Union’s Conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing, which highlight the importance of not-for-profit, scholarly open access publishing models….

There are over 3,000 open access repositories in Europe (1) – mainly hosted by universities, research centers and government agencies – that are a critical component of a not-for-profit scholarly communications infrastructure; one that can and should be leveraged to achieve the aims of the Council’s Conclusions. Repositories are much more than a parallel system (collecting manuscripts of paywalled papers). They reflect an investment in public research infrastructure that can expand and support innovation in scholarly publishing by connecting repository resources to value-added services, such as peer review (see for example, the model adopted by HAL and Peer Community In)….”