The recently adopted Council Conclusions on scholarly publishing under the Swedish Presidency should establish Open Science as the new way of doing research.
On 23 May 2023, at the Competitiveness Council (COMPET) in Brussels, the Council of the EU adopted Council Conclusions on ‘high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing’ that call for immediate and unrestricted open access in publishing research financed by public funds. Previously, on 20 May 2023, and in line with the Council Conclusions, the Hiroshima Leader’s Communiqué was published, highlighting that the G7 “will promote open science by equitably disseminating scientific knowledge, publicly funded research outputs including research data and scholarly publications following the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles”, but also work together “to promote responsible global science and technology cooperation”.
Currently, different challenges need to be addressed in the transition to Open Science: Costs to access and publish articles are increasing and becoming unsustainable, predatory publishing practices are common, and publication channels are often provided by private companies, which are controlling the intellectual property rights of articles. Besides, peer reviews of articles are vital to guarantee the quality of the articles, but there is an increasing reviewer fatigue; hence, peer reviews should be properly recognised.
The transition towards Open Science (OS) is one of the key priorities of the Swedish Presidency of the European Union. In this context, the Presidency already organised earlier this month a conference on ‘Open Science to Practice’ on 16-17 May 2023 to highlight different perspectives on implementing and embedding OS, sharing best practices and knowledge and discussing how to implement the policies. Besides, the liked costs when it comes to publishing, capacity building and the establishment of suitable research infrastructures were highlighted. Moreover, the Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on Citizen’s Science was emphasised positively (see SwissCore article). Additionally, the Swedish Presidency plans to launch the Lund Declaration during a conference in Lund on ‘The Potential of Research Data: How Research Infrastructures provide new opportunities and benefits for society’ on 19-20 June.
For the recently adopted Council Conclusions, the Swedish Council Presidency was able to build on the previous work of the Czech (see SwissCore article) and the French Presidency (see SwissCore article). The Conclusions recall the Conclusions of 2015 on research integrity, the Conclusions of 2016 on the transition towards an open science system, the Recommendations of 2022 on bridging for effective European higher education cooperation, the Conclusions of June 2022 on principles and values for international cooperation in research and innovation, and on Conclusions of June 2022 on research assessment and implementation of open science (see SwissCore article).
The Council Conclusions on scholarly publishing emphasise three main aspects: i. towards an open, equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing system; ii. supporting diversity and ensuring equity in scholarly publishing; and iii. enhancing trust and ensuring high quality, transparency and integrity in scholarly publishing. To move forward, the focus is laid on framework conditions and infrastructures (that shall be connected to EOSC). It also asks Member States (MS) to support Open Research Europe. It includes a series of actions that MS should undertake to move forward, for example, an update of their national open access policies and guidelines to make scholarly publications immediately openly accessible under open licences as well as apply the principles of FAIR and as open as possible, as closed as necessary to research data. Besides, it calls on the Commission and the MS to support policies towards a scholarly publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers, and asks to use open-source software and standards. It also highlights the importance of awareness raising and skill development among researchers and institutions about the consequences when copyrights are transferred to publishers, and to recognise and reward peer review activities in the assessment of researchers. Moreover, the Conclusions propose to include a suitable OS monitoring mechanism in ERA.
However, even if OS is an ongoing priority for the European Union, research ministers highlighted during the COMPET on 23 May 2023 that OS should be linked with responsible international science cooperation based on shared values and reciprocity, which was also discussed in a dedicated session on `knowledge security and responsible internationalisation’. It means the balance of openness and security as well as safeguarding academic freedom and institutional autonomy. This approach was also highlighted during the G7 meeting in Sendai. Additionally, on 23 May 2023, Digital Europe and other stakeholder organisations published a joint statement on access to data by public bodies, highlighting that the unrestricted data sharing planned in the Data Act could be a threat.