Data governance: Enhancing access to and sharing of data – OECD

“Access to and sharing of data are increasingly critical for fostering data-driven scientific discovery and innovations across the private and public sectors globally and will play a role in solving societal challenges, including fighting COVID-19 and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But restrictions to data access, sometimes compounded by a reluctance to share, and a growing awareness of the risks that come with data access and sharing, means economies and societies are not harnessing the full potential of data.

Adopted in October 2021, the OECD Recommendation on Enhancing Access to and Sharing of Data (EASD) is the first internationally agreed upon set of principles and policy guidance on how governments can maximise the cross-sectoral benefits of all types of data – personal, non-personal, open, proprietary, public and private – while protecting the rights of individuals and organisations.

The Recommendation intends to help governments develop coherent data governance policies and frameworks to unlock the potential benefits of data across and within sectors, countries, organisations, and communities. It aims to reinforce trust across the data ecosystem, stimulate investment in data and incentivise data access and sharing, and foster effective and responsible data access, sharing and use across sectors and jurisdictions.

The Recommendation is a key deliverable of phase 3 of the OECD’s Going Digital project, focused on data governance for frowth and well-being. It was developed by three OECD Committees (Digital Economy Policy, Scientific and Technological Policy, and Public Governance) and acts as a common reference for existing and new OECD legal instruments related to data in areas such as research, health and digital government. It will provide a foundation stone for ongoing OECD work to help countries unlock the potential of data in the digital era.”

Open Access Australasia Webinar

“The contribution of open access to the UN Sustainable Development Goals presented by Director of Research and Corporate at UNSW Library, Fiona Bradley

The UN Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2016. Five years in, great progress has been made in some areas while others lag. When the goals were adopted, the importance of data, evidence, and research to demonstrate progress was emphasised, but how much has been achieved and what role does open access play?

Join us for a brief overview of the process that led to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda process and the ongoing review mechanisms will emphasize the agenda as a tool for advocacy at global, national, and local institutional levels in which open access and access to information contribute to underpinning the achievement of all other goals.”

Open Access is Key to the Sustainable Development Goals – Librarian Resources

“Open Access is key to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals are reliant on improved access to information and knowledge, therefore creating a clear link between Open Access, access to information, and sustainable development.

Open Access supports the importance of immediate access and access to all. Open access publishing makes scientific results available to everyone and facilitates new discoveries and empowers researchers through rapid and efficient access to knowledge.
Open Access benefits researchers, innovators, teachers, students, media professionals and the public.
It promotes global knowledge flow for the benefit of scientific discovery, innovation, and socio-economic development. Open Access is beneficial to all users in all countries, but disproportionately limits users in developing countries who have poor or non-existent acquisition budgets….

UNESCO “believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.” International organizations such as UNESCO already recognize this connection and officially recognize open access as a driver for achievement of the SDGs and sustainable social, political, and economic development. UNESCO believes that Open Access has a fundamental role to support the SDGs and supports the agendas of Open Access….”

Data Informed Societies Achieving Sustainability Tasks for the Global Scientific Engineering and Medical Communities A Virtual Workshop | National Academies

“The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will convene a virtual public workshop, Data-Informed Societies Achieving Sustainability: Tasks for the Global Scientific, Engineering, and Medical Communities on September 9 and 10 (Thursday and Friday). Please register in advance to receive information on how to participate in the workshop.  

The workshop will explore how the global scientific, engineering, and medical communities can better facilitate the effective use of data to advance sustainability in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The workshop will also discuss crosscutting issues, such as strengthening the engagement of scientific, engineering, and medical communities in efforts to shape the post-2030 agenda on data-related issues, addressing disparities in the ability of societies to utilize data, and highlighting insights and lessons learned from global experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. …”

Keep digital sequence information a common good

“The political debate surrounding digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has garnered immense interest and raised concern across the international scientific community. At the last CBD Conference of the Parties (COP 14), parties formally “agreed to resolve their differences” and, thus, with COP 15 set for October 2021, a decision on DSI and access and benefit-sharing (ABS) approaches.

Disrupting the flow of open DSI has the potential to not only severely hinder basic research and biodiversity conservation, but also innovation more broadly. This includes science and technology that addresses challenges in food security, health, biodiversity loss, and climate change worldwide, which could ultimately undermine progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What’s at stake is best highlighted by the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: diagnostic kits within weeks of virus discovery, vaccines ten months later, and ongoing surveillance for variants, all possible thanks to rapid DNA sequencing and open DSI….” 

Video Recording + Slides: LIBER 2021 Session #4: Open Access: a Case for Diversity and Inclusion

Presenter Slides are Available at:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5036355

 

Description

In the first presentation, Henk van den Hoogen and Timon Oefelein present the results of a unique collaborative Open Science initiative by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), Springer Nature and several academic libraries in the Netherlands. This presentation provides background to the initiative, its rationale, objectives, and interdisciplinary make up, as well as summarising its key results and those from two large global researcher surveys to do with researchers’ motivations towards SDG research and usage trends of both OA and non-OA content. The presentation will be of interest to academic support librarians supporting researchers with publication and impact, as well as data librarians interested in innovative new SDG mapping technology, and bibliometric and members of the research assessment community interested in new ways of defining and capturing the societal impact of research.

Next, Jos Westerbeke will give a lightning talk about Federated Identity Management (FIM4L), one of LIBER’s Working Groups. In hist talk, they will provide insights and recommendations into authentication practices (single sign-on) for licensed materials and differing privacy issues. He will also discuss what to do when publishers delay implementing privacy enhancing changes and how the Working Group can help with setting up the right configuration for federated SSO access according to a broadly supported uniform library SSO method conforming to FIM4L principles.

Finally, Elisa Herrmann, Stefanie Paß, and Jana Rumler will provide insights from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, a small integrated research museum within the Leibniz Association. In their presentation, they will discuss the future activities for the implementation and promotion of Open Access in their institution, which include an in-house publication fund, the development of Green Open Access infrastructures, and the handling of OA publications in the acquisition process. As a smaller institution themselves, they will also pose the question of how big the gap is in the implementation of Open Access between large and small libraries. They will then identify possibilities to narrow the gap and, in the best case, create structures that will help smaller libraries to promote Open Access and Open Science in their institutions.

 

 

Press Release: Springer Nature and LYRASIS Announce Open Access Sponsorship Agreement for Books that Support Research and Teaching Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

“Springer Nature has signed its first sponsorship agreement for open access books with LYRASIS, a US non-profit membership association of libraries, archives, and museums, starting in 2021. The agreement is set to lead to the publication of new open access book titles. The collaboration will focus on climate change, equity, peace, and justice and will provide free access to research in critical areas that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Springer Nature is helping to advance the SDGs through a dedicated SDG publishing programme, bringing to light and disseminating important knowledge related to the world’s most pressing challenges. Since the SDGs were launched in 2015, Springer Nature has published more than 300,000 relevant articles and book chapters, which have been downloaded more than 750 million times. Springer Nature is also leading the way in open access book (OA) publishing, first piloting open access books in 2011. Its open access book portfolio now includes over 1,400 titles spanning all academic disciplines, with more than 170 million chapter downloads worldwide. As research shows that open access books are downloaded ten times more often and cited 2.4 times more, reaching 61% more countries compared to non-open access books, this new sponsoring partnership will foster the advancement of science as well as the visibility, dissemination and impact of research on these critical challenges. 

The new open access book titles will be published under the Springer Nature imprints of Springer and Palgrave Macmillan under a CC BY 4.0 licence to give readers around the world free access to the books via Springer Nature’s content platform SpringerLink. …”