“SciLake is a Horizon Europe project that aims to introduce and establish the concept of the scientific lake, a research ecosystem where scientific knowledge is contextualised, connected, interoperable, and accessible overcoming challenges related to the heterogeneity and large interconnectivity of the underlying data….”
On 17/18th January the PALOMERA (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) project kicked off with a meeting in Brussels, Belgium. Representatives from the 16 partners gathered to launch the new two-year project, funded by HORIZON Europe.
“The PALOMERA project (Supporting the development of aligned policies for open access books and monographs) is funded for two years under the Horizon Europe: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101094270).
Academic books continue to play an important role in scholarly production and research communication, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. As an important output of scholarly production, academic books must be included in open science/open access policies and strategies developed by research funders and institutions, to ensure that open science becomes the modus operandi of modern science across all disciplines. However, contrary to article publishing in journals (especially in the areas of Science, Technology, and Medicine) academic books have not been a focus point for open access (OA) policymakers. Consequently, books are only rarely mandated to be published OA by research funders and institutions.
PALOMERA will investigate the reasons for this situation across geographies, languages, economies, and disciplines within the European Research Area (ERA). Through desk studies, surveys, in-depth interviews, and use cases, PALOMERA will collect, structure, analyse, and make available knowledge that can explain the challenges and bottlenecks that prevent OA to academic books. Based on this evidence, PALOMERA will provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for OA books, with the overall objective of speeding up the transition to open access for books to further promote open science.
The recommendations will address all relevant stakeholders (research funders and institutions, researchers, publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers). The PALOMERA consortium broadly represents all relevant stakeholders for OA academic books, but will facilitate co-creation and validation events throughout the project to ensure that the views and voices of all relevant stakeholders are represented, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. This will assure maximal consensus and take-up of the recommendations….”
“OSIRIS will investigate, trial and implement interventions to improve reproducibility in science
While over the past decade many interventions to improve reproducibility have been introduced, targeted at funders, publishers or individual researchers, only few of them have been empirically tested. OSIRIS will do just that, testing existing and newly developed interventions, including Open Science practices, through controlled trials. The underlying drivers, barriers and incentives of reproducibility will also be studied in a systematic way. Aim is to deliver and disseminate guidance about evidence-based interventions that can improve the reproducibility of scientific findings….”
Abstract: Open Research Europe (ORE) is the open access peer-reviewed publishing platform offered by the European Commission as an optional service to Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe beneficiaries at no cost to them. The platform enables researchers to publish open access without paying out of their research budgets and while complying with their open access obligations. This paper identifies potential financing and governance model(s) that would operationalize ORE as a collective publishing enterprise, supported by research funders and possibly research organizations, as of 2026. The aim of this study is to develop a sustainable, scalable funding model that is not based on article publication charges (APCs). To this end, the main business and financing models for not-for-profit publishing services were reviewed, based on a series of case studies and interviews with seven leading not-for-profit service providers. The paper outlines possible business model(s) for the financing of the operations of the Open Research Europe platform in the future and sets out actionable recommendations for implementing such a business model, appropriate to the scope and scale of the endeavour. It assesses how to incorporate equity into the design of Open Research Europe; and how to make Open Research Europe sustainable in the long run.
Aix-Marseille Université, cOAlition S, and Science Europe are pleased to announce that they are participating in a Horizon Europe project called ‘Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication’ (DIAMAS). The 3-year project, launched on the 1st of September 2022, receives funding in the context of the Horizon Europe call on Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe.
The DIAMAS project, which was awarded a grant of €3m, brings together 23 European organisations that will map out the landscape of Diamond Open Access publishing in the European Research Area and develop common standards, guidelines and practices for the Diamond publishing sector. The project partners will also formulate recommendations for research institutions to coordinate sustainable support for Diamond publishing activities across Europe.
Moreover, the DIAMAS project will interact closely with the global community of the ‘Action Plan for Diamond Open Access’ signatories. While the project will spearhead some of the activities laid out in the Action Plan, it welcomes complementary actions and contributions. As a first step, DIAMAS project partners and members of the Diamond Open Access Plan Community had the chance to meet and discuss collaboration opportunities during the Diamond Open Access Conference (Zadar, Croatia, 19 – 20 September 2022).
“Projects are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:
Improved understanding of the current landscape of institutional scientific publishing activities across Europe.
Coordination amongst institutional publishing services and initiatives across Europe at the non-technological level and improve their overall service efficiency, in particular in a multilingual environment.
Actionable recommendations for strategies regarding institutional publishing in research performing organisations across the European Research Area.
These targeted outcomes in turn contribute to medium and long-term impacts:
Increased equity, diversity and inclusivity of open science practices in the European Research Area.
Increased capacity in the EU R&I system to conduct open science and set it as a modus operandi of modern science.
Scope:
Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in open access publishing activities. Commercial scientific publishers and other service providers have turned their attention to open access publishing, responding to increased demand for open access by funders and research performing organisations. Research institutions have also developed their own open access publishing activities and services. These are either new and based on open access publishing, or are existing publishing activities transitioning into the new digital and open access environment. Libraries are often involved, while new types of mission-driven open access university presses are also emerging in Europe and beyond. Such initiatives do not require article fees for publishing, and are often supported by their institutions. They enable open access publishing of journals and other types of outcomes in various languages and are important in supporting multilingualism in Europe. At the same time, they often have not gained the prestige bestowed on established publishing venues, usually produced in collaboration with well-known commercial scientific publishers. Moreover, institutional publishing in the social sciences and the humanities is often in languages other than English, which is both an asset and a limitation….”
In the transition towards Open Access (OA), institutional publishing is challenged by fragmentation and varying service quality, visibility, and sustainability. To address this issue, DIAMAS gathers 23 organisations from 12 European countries, well-versed in OA academic publishing and scholarly communication.
The project will:
1. Map the current landscape of Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in 25 countries of the ERA with special attention for IPSPs that do not charge fees for publishing or reading. This will yield a taxonomy of IPSPs and an IPSP landscape report, a basis for the rest of the project.
2. Coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing a European Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). This quality seal will professionalise, strengthen and reduce the fragmentation of institutional publishing in Europe. EQSIP will serve as a benchmark for a gap analysis of the data in (1). Buy-in and capacity-building is ensured by co-creation with the relevant IPSP communities of practice, creating a Common Access Point for IPSPs, an IPSP registry with 80% of IPSPs in the ERA, publishing guidelines, training materials, self-assessment tools, financial models, and shared cost frameworks. DIAMAS embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion by addressing gender equity in OA publishing and multilingualism in 15 European languages. Special attention is paid to building and enabling the financial sustainability of IPSPs.
3. Formulate community-led, actionable recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders/sponsors/donors, and policymakers in the European Research Area (ERA). Workshops and targeted networking actions will reach and engage institutional decision-makers. In 36 months, DIAMAS will deliver an aligned, high-quality, and sustainable institutional OA scholarly publication ecosystem for the ERA, setting a new standard for OA publishing, shared and co-designed with all stakeholders.
The European Commission recently signed grant agreements with 49 projects that successfully applied to Horizon Europe: Reforming and Enhancing the European R&I System and Research Infrastructures.
Find out more about these two funding opportunities and the upcoming projects below.
Reforming and Enhancing the European R&I System
Reforming the European R&I System is part of the Horizon Europe’s Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area call (Destination 3).
Call for funding opened on 08 June 2021 and closed on 23 September 2021.
Out of the 44 applications received, 20 projects covering 15 topics were funded, for a total of about 50.5 million euros of European Commission contribution.
Projects start between June 2022 and September 2022.
Find below an overview of the selected projects per call topic(s)/type(s) of action:
[…]
“EU science ministers today signed off an agreement backing research assessment reform in Europe, alongside conclusions on open science, international cooperation and Horizon Europe missions.
In a meeting in Luxembourg, the 27 ministers acknowledged it’s time for the EU to revamp how it evaluates research, putting more weight into the quality of research outcomes rather than qualitative indicators such as journal impact factors and number of citations….”
Registration form for the event. Provides no description.
“These pages are updated with the answers to the most frequent questions that have been submitted to the Research Enquiry Service and Participant Validation, IT Helpdesk, eProcurement Helpdesk, Call Coordinators and Horizon Europe NCP correspondents….”
“The series of blog posts on 3Os in Horizon Europe is trying to introduce how Open Science, Open Innovation and Open to the World principles affect your following Horizon Europe proposal or funded project.
Open to the World principle may mean many things for your Horizon Europe proposals and projects, e.g.,
How to ensure international knowledge and information exchange outside Europe to tackle global challenges?
How to involve organisations from third countries? (We discuss this question in a separate blog post)
How to promote and use science diplomacy? …”
Guarantee for Horizon Europe applicants announced last November extended to awards signed by the end of 2022.
“The beneficiaries must ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their results. In particular, they must ensure that:
– at the latest at the time of publication, a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or the final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, is deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications
– immediate open access is provided to the deposited publication via the repository, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Public Licence (CC BY) or a licence with equivalent rights; for monographs and other long-text formats, the licence may exclude commercial uses and derivative works (e.g. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND) and
– information is given via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication.
Beneficiaries (or authors) must retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with the open access requirements….”