The EC promotes a more open approach to science in universities and research institutions. A report gives five key recommendations to enable this approach.
On 9 December 2021 a report on enabling open science and societal engagement in research was published. The European Commission (EC) has the ambition for Open Science to become the norm for research and innovation across the European Research Area (ERA). To reach this ambition, the EC Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (RTD) and the European Research Executive Agency (REA) organised a one-day workshop in summer 2021. The event was primarily held to better understand the challenges arising in reaching the Open Science goal and effective ways to address these. The published report documents insights from discussions and presentations made during the workshop. This is closely related to Horizon Europe, where the EC provides support for projects to reform and enhance the European research and innovation systems, Open Science, and strengthened research careers.
The workshop involved 36 REA-managed Science with and for Society (SwafS) projects. Delegates from SwafS’ “Institutional Changes” projects funded under Horizon 2020, and the initial cohort of European University Alliances under the European University Initiative attended the event. The participants shared their experiences on how Open Science and societal engagement can be enabled to become the norm in the research-performing organisations across the European Research Area. The report gives an overview of five key recommendations to enable Open Science and societal engagement in research.
The first recommendation focuses on universities and other research performing organisations. These should reform criteria, metrics and processes supporting researchers’ recruitment and career progression to reward Open Science practices. In this context, the extent to which society has been engaged and included in research and innovation should be specifically assessed. The EC should provide support for universities that have begun to implement Open Science reforms and learn from those who have already taken the initiative into practice. Secondly, the institutionalisation of Open Science in research performing organisations should be considered as a long-term project for which, leadership, co-ordination and sustained legitimation is provided. This requires the availability of resources for skills development, training and co-ordination on the European level. The next recommendation asks the involved institutions and organisations to continue to make reforms to indicators, measures and processes utilised by them in all evaluations to ensure the inclusion of the assessment and evaluation of Open Science practices. Fourthly, the EC and national research funders should continuously improve criteria, metrics and methods that underpin research proposal evaluation processes. Under Horizon Europe, progress has already been made as regards “engagements of citizens, civil society and end-users” within evaluations of the methodology under the excellence criterion. The final recommendation focuses on the need that universities ranking organisations should undertake reforms to criteria, metrics and methods to reward Open Science practices in order to strengthen ranking systems for universities.
Workshop attendees mention that there is a need for substantial reforms to the managerial logic in universities if Open Science is to become the new norm. Reforms to definitions and measures of research quality and impact are needed, especially for applied and strategic research. Moreover, there exists an urgent need to reform indicators and measures of research performance and reputation, of which reforms to university ranking systems are a priority. The given recommendations should be sector-wide, i.e. across the European higher education sector and European Research Area, to ensure a level playing field for research performing organisations and research.