YERUN is looking for a Policy Officer to start in September 2023. We are looking for a committed professional, proactive, eager to contribute to a dynamic team, with strong experience in the European research and innovation sector, good knowledge of the higher education sector and university associations in Brussels, and experience in working with NGOs or international organisations.
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“Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software based at University of Limerick, has been awarded a European prize recognising its commitment to open science principles.
The centre launched its Open Science Charter and an Open Source and Open Science Programme Office last October.
The Young European Research Universities Open Science Awards were announced on February 14 at an online ceremony. This is the second year of the awards which recognise Open Science initiatives, of different kinds, across the YERUN network….”
An “advent calendar” for open science presenting a different objection or misunderstanding of open science for every day in December. Click through for the response to it from Yerun.
“Today, following the decisions of its Executive Board and the approval of its member institutions, YERUN becomes an official signatory of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment and officially expresses its willingness to join the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
YERUN has been strongly involved in the process leading to the reform of Research Assessment since the very beginning of the initiative. It has been part of the Core Group supporting the development of the Agreement, and since September, is member of the Implementation Group that has advised the development of the CoARA initiative. In light of its strong commitment, YERUN values its future involvement in CoARA and will contribute at the best of its possibilities for the initiative to be useful, relevant and a real enabler of change.
Contextually with the signature, the network published a position paper with 4 suggestions to be considered within the implementation of the initiative and more specifically towards the 1st Constitutive Assembly of CoARA:
Ensuring ownership of the initiative by those that are making change happen.
Promoting an open and flexible governance model.
Encouraging a new approach to change.
Reaching critical mass is the key to becoming a global actor….”
Abstract: The availability of Open Access journals in the various fields of knowledge in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science is hypothesized to present strong inequalities, thus affecting the choice of journals by researchers wishing to publish their research results in Open Access. The first objective of this research was to contrast this hypothesis, by crossing the list of journals available at WoS with the lists of the Directory of Open Access Journals. The availability of OA journals presents strong inequalities, ranging from 5 to 40% depending on the field of knowledge. At the level of universities, such disparity in the availability of Open Access journals is an important factor regarding their accomplishment of Open Access mandates considering their specialization profiles. In this work, as the second objective, the publications available on the Web of Science (from 2016 to 2020) of the universities belonging to the YERUN Network (Young European Research Universities) are studied in order to identify their specialization profiles, their Open Access types (and evolution) and the possible interactions between their specialization and the availability of Open Access journals and their respective fields of specialization. A general overview of the volumes of funded research and the different proportions of Open Access and non-Open Access in funded and non-funded research is also provided. The indicator “Open Access Likelihood” is introduced and applied as a proxy for the likelihood of Open Access publications taking into account the fields of specialization of the YERUN universities. The results of its application underline the need to take into consideration both, specialization and Open Access availability when designing feasible Open Access mandates. Future research includes the study of the availability of Open Access journals by tiers of impact actors.
In March 2022, the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access was launched, upon initiative of Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR). The objective of the Action Plan is to further develop and expand a sustainable, community-driven Diamond OA scholarly communication ecosystem.
YERUN is among the numerous organisations supporting the Action Plan and is eager to actively contribute to its implementation. This is why we are organising an online event on 20th June (10:30 – 12:30 CEST) aiming to contribute to the ongoing discussions and complement the intentions laid out in the Action Plan with a more hands-on perspective: what are universities doing to promote this yet under-exploited publication format? What are the obstacles that are preventing it from reaching its full potential? What can the research sector do to overcome these obstacles?
Through presentations and discussions in breakout rooms, a fruitful dialogue will be fostered to better define the role that every actor can play in promoting Diamond Open Access.