The EC’s ‘Open Research Europe’ Open Access publishing platform will facilitate the sharing of research results, but scientists see some flaws in the system.
Publishing research articles Open Access will become even easier for grantees of the European R&I Framework Programmes in the future. As announced earlier this year (see SwissCore article), the European Commission (EC) launched their own Open Access Publishing Platform ‘Open Research Europe’ in cooperation with F1000 Research, an open access publishing platform supporting data deposition and sharing, on 26 November. The platform will offer fast publication and open peer review for research stemming from Horizon 2020 funding across all subject areas. Later, the platform may also extend to research of the new R&I Framework Programme Horizon Europe.
Researchers can start submitting their results as early as December 2020, and the articles will become available online soon in early 2021. The platform enables researchers to publish any research they wish to share, supporting reproducibility, transparency and impact. It uses an open research-publishing model, which will see publication within only days of submission, followed by open invited peer review. Expert reviewers will be selected and invited, and their reviews and names will be published alongside the article, together with the authors’ responses and comments from registered users. To facilitate reuse, reanalysis and replication of results, articles published on the platform will include citations to all supporting data and materials. All Horizon 2020 grantees are eligible to publish at no cost to them.
The system is not entirely new; the EC’s initiative follows similar ones already taken by other funders such as the Wellcome Trust or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also in cooperation with F1000. Of course, the initiative’s success also relies on its adoption. The EC’s research and innovation Director-General Jean-Eric Paquet thus reached out directly to Horizon grantees with a letter encouraging the use. However, reactions were mixed. While some welcome the platform as a great new tool, especially for researchers from disciplines with currently less access to Open Access formats such as social sciences and humanities, or to prevent negative results from ending up in a drawer, others remain critical. They doubt the value of publications on the platform for research assessment purposes and grant evaluations by the EU agencies and beyond, as there is no specific statement hinting at such procedure. Fears also concern the open peer review method. Especially excellent young researchers may shy away from reviewing by having to disclose their names openly. They would want to avoid confrontation with more senior authors and may be less critical if reviewing, with a potential impact on the quality of publications. Another source for scepticism is the exclusiveness of the platform to Horizon grantees.
The launch of the new platform is only one element in a general push from the EC towards Open Access. Open Access rules for Horizon Europe will follow mostly the rules laid out by Plan S, an initiative of a consortium of mostly European funders, which forbids grantees to publish their results behind pay-walls. Results stemming from Horizon Europe funded research will have to be published Open Access immediately via repository and the EC will only cover publication fees in full Open Access venues.