Category Archives: oa.leru

Open Access & Open Science: failure is not an option for any party | LERU

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“LERU welcomes the presently developed draft Council Conclusions on “high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing”, to be adopted at the Competitiveness Council meeting of 23 May 2023[1]. They take Open Access to the next stage of implementation across Europe and thus represent a key move in embedding Open Science into the European research landscape. Many LERU papers, on Open Access, Open Data and Open Science have advocated the same causes.

For LERU, it is important that the upcoming Council Conclusions recognize that the increasing costs for scholarly publishing associated with certain business models may cause inequalities in communities and actually prove to be unsustainable for research funders and universities. Many people are now aware of the increase in publishing prices and the spread of transformative agreements, a result of which is a consolidation of the oligopoly in the publishing system.

The essential problem occurs when there are no reductions in price but increases, and where the resulting coverage is low. The threat is what will happen if everything is flipped to Open Access with high APC charges, both individual and under an agreement….”

Brussels plan for rival OA platform ‘naive’ | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“As anger mounts over cost of open access deals, moves to finance diamond journals and expand state-run digital platforms have divided opinion…

Calls to transform the European Union’s research repository into a “collective, non-profit, large-scale publishing service for the public good” that could rival commercial publishers have been described as “naive” and a distraction to the open-access mission by experts….

Amid growing unease over the high cost of several national open-access deals, including Springer Nature’s new three-year agreement with UK universities, the European Council was set to agree a motion that says “immediate and unrestricted open access” without author fees should become the “norm” in scholarly publishing.

The European Commission, which runs the €105 billion (£90 billion) Horizon Europe research funding scheme, should introduce funding policies to support open-access publishers that do not charge author fees, it adds. That might mean Horizon funding being tied to publication in so-called “diamond” journals, which are both free to read and publish in thanks to subsidies from universities, governments or other funders.

The memo, first presented by the Swedish presidency of the EU in February, also suggests a massive scaling-up of the EU’s open-access platform Open Research Europe (ORE), a site launched in 2021 that has fewer than 500 publications so far.

That proposal received a mixed response from the League of European Research Universities (LERU), which noted the scale of the proposed project was “massive” and a “single pan-European system is not likely to work successfully”.

Instead, the umbrella body suggested that what “Europe may really need is the development of an open, inter-connected, publicly owned infrastructure”, and urged the creation of funding calls to support university engagement with this kind of system….”

Positive developments in making EU copyright & data legislation fit for research | LERU

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“In this context, LERU calls for the improvement of the regulatory framework, enabling unimpeded access to and reuse of publicly funded research results, publications, and data for research purposes….

LERU agrees with the experts’ views and welcomes the potential measures to create a balance in the interests of the various stakeholders. To that end, LERU shares specific recommendations contributing to the Commission’s ultimate goal to provide a legal framework fit for research that will benefit the scientific community as well as society as a whole, through the following statements:

EU Copyright legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them

 

EU Data and digital legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them …”

Positive developments in making EU copyright & data legislation fit for research | LERU

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“In this context, LERU calls for the improvement of the regulatory framework, enabling unimpeded access to and reuse of publicly funded research results, publications, and data for research purposes….

LERU agrees with the experts’ views and welcomes the potential measures to create a balance in the interests of the various stakeholders. To that end, LERU shares specific recommendations contributing to the Commission’s ultimate goal to provide a legal framework fit for research that will benefit the scientific community as well as society as a whole, through the following statements:

EU Copyright legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them

 

EU Data and digital legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them …”

Positive developments in making EU copyright & data legislation fit for research | LERU

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“In this context, LERU calls for the improvement of the regulatory framework, enabling unimpeded access to and reuse of publicly funded research results, publications, and data for research purposes….

LERU agrees with the experts’ views and welcomes the potential measures to create a balance in the interests of the various stakeholders. To that end, LERU shares specific recommendations contributing to the Commission’s ultimate goal to provide a legal framework fit for research that will benefit the scientific community as well as society as a whole, through the following statements:

EU Copyright legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them

 

EU Data and digital legislation and research

LERU statement – observations and recommendations on legal experts’ views on barriers and challenges with focus on potential measures to address them …”

LERU Data Statement | LERU

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The LERU Data Statement is LERU’s way forward to tackle the increasing dependence on dominant platform companies. Platform companies have become a driving force in the design of public universities’ learning and teaching environments and define and steer universities’ digital architectures through hardware and software technologies. LERU is concerned that this leads to user- and vendor- lock-in.

At the same time, major European data legislation affecting universities has to provide clarity to restore universities’ independence and to help them deliver on their role as keepers of a common culture of knowledge and an agent of new knowledge. LERU worries that universities in the EU are considered equal to market sectors. Universities should be recognised as having a distinct public value and be regarded as critical infrastructures in society.

Therefore LERU is putting forward a number of basic principles in this Data Statement for dealing with data, addressing all stakeholders involved: legislators, digital providers, individuals in universities, universities, and industry. The current position is untenable and drastic action needs to be taken, both practically and in legislation, to restore universities’ independence of action and to help them deliver on their goals in support of knowledge creation for the benefit of society.

Corona virus will strengthen Open Science | LERU

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“The pandemic is a chance to show that Open Science practices, such as sharing the data from trials and investigations, make it possible to find successful treatments and develop successful vaccines quickly, for the benefit of society. So while the pandemic is an appalling threat, it’s also an amazing opportunity to change research culture, so that we emerge from the pandemic stronger than when we went in….”

Towards a Research Integrity Culture at Universities: From Recommendations to Implementation

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“In recent years there has a been a cultural change in which the outcomes of research are expected to be available to a wider public, in what has been termed ‘open science’. This brings both opportunities and challenges with regard to research integrity and researchers should be made aware of this. With research open to a wider public, there are opportunities for greater awareness and scrutiny of research results. Universities should encourage researchers to make research data ‘open’ and provide a research infrastructure in which responsible management of research data is facilitated. Guidance should be developed for researchers on the appropriate use of secondary data from other sources. Research should be credited in a proper and transparent way through responsible authorship or acknowledgment, and previously published research should be properly cited….”

Data Summit in Paris | LERU

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“The international Research Data Rights Summit was held at Sorbonne University on Monday, 27 January. This initiative brought together nine major networks of research-intensive universities from major regions of the world. It was an opportunity to sign the “Sorbonne Declaration” on the rights of research data. This text strongly affirms the willingness of universities to share their data while firmly calling on governments to adopt a clear legal framework to regulate this sharing and to provide the means to put it in place. …”

Plan S – To be a winner, plan to win | LERU

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“The majority of the points made by LERU in its response to the initial announcement of the impending launch of Plan S have been addressed in the Implementation Plan, and this is welcome. LERU stressed that the original goal of full transition to Open Access by 1 January 2020, from the point of view of logistics, was impossible. The Implementation Plan acknowledges this and now sees implementation as beginning on 1 January 2020. The wider context of Open Access is also addressed in the Implementation Plan. Signatories of Plan S will sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and implement its stipulations. Similarly, the Implementation Plan recognizes the calls made by LERU and others to be more explicit about the role of Green Open Access repositories in the transition to full Open Access (OA)….”

Accelerating the transition to full and immediate Open Access to scientific publications: LERU’s reaction to Plan S

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The League of European Research Universities (LERU)reaction to the announcement of ‘Plan S’

“Plan S represents a bold plan fundamentally to change the pattern of academic publishing, moving decisively away from subscription journals to full and immediate Open Access (OA). From 1 January 2020 academic publications, where the research has been funded by public grants provided by national and European Research Councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access platforms. The vision is ambitious and represents a further step in the unstoppable move to immediate Open Access. The researchers will retain their copyright and will not be able to assign it to publishers as a condition of being published. Article Processing Charges (APCs) will be capped at a certain level and, crucially, payment of hybrid APCs will no longer be possible via this funding mechanism.”

The LERU Roadmap towards Open Access: LERU Open Access Working Group (June 2011)

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“The two basic mechanisms through which researchers can make their work freely available are often termed as the ‘gold route’ and the ‘green route.’ The adoption of either or both routes could lead to a transformation in the means of disseminating research outputs by LERU and other universities across the globe….”

Open Access to Research Publications (2012)

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“Open Access represents a conscious decision by the League of European Research Universities to investigate new models for scholarly communication and the dissemination of research outputs emanating from researchers….The LERU Roadmap Towards Open Access gives fuller details of Open Access developments and implementations in LERU institutions. LERU strongly advocates that the Horizon 2020 programme adopt the position outlined in this guidance paper….”