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Open4DE Spotlight on the Open Access Ecosystem in Switzerland

Authors: Malte Dreyer, Martina Benz, Maike Neufend and Theresa Bärwolff

Open Access is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of open access and open science in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide Open Access strategies.

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Open4DE Spotlight on Austria: How European and National Levels Interact

Authors: Malte Dreyer, Martina Benz and Maike Neufend

Open Access is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of open access and open science in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide Open Access strategies.

From Open Access to Open Science: a European trend

Following the adoption of Open Access policies by numerous European countries in recent years, the trend is now towards the design of Open Science policies. Finland has already announced that it will publish an Open Science strategy in the near future, and France has already done so. Austria also attracted attention earlier this year, publishing a guiding paper that provides a roadmap for the implementation of Open Science in the coming years. Reason enough for us to take a closer look at how this paper came about and what the general state of Openness is in our neighboring country.

Our interview partner

We met Dr. Stefan Hanslik for a conversation about Open Science policy making in Austria. Stefan Hanslik is an expert on Open Access and Open Science at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and acts as delegate in various scientific committees at European level. As Head of Unit for Technical Sciences, he is involved in the topics of data and research infrastructures. In addition, Stefan Hanslik has been active in the EOSC process since 2018: through this involvement he also came in touch with European initiatives on Open Science.

The European framework

The history of the development of Open Science and Open Access in Austria clearly demonstrates the importance of the European framework in which national research and publication infrastructures are situated. An example of this is the EOSC process, which initially started in Austria in 2016, among others in an informal group of representatives of universities and ministries. This group, the so-called EOSC-Café, that focused on coordination, information, reflection and consultation on European processes, allowed to find a common understanding of Open Science. The discussion of EOSC also led to the question of whether a national Open Science strategy was necessary and what it might look like. The Open Science topic finally received additional support during the Austrian EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2018, Stefan Hanslik informs us. „With the emerging discussions at EU level and the call for all member state countries to take Open Science-related measures, there was a willingness in Austria to become active. After all, no one wanted to risk infringement proceedings.” Finally, the commitment to the European Research Area was included in the principles of the current government, „a backbone for our Open Science activities, that was important tailwind.“ European measures have often a strong inward effect, one can sum up.

National factors

In addition to the activities of the EU, numerous national initiatives were also important for the development of Open Science in Austria: „The initiative originally came from institutions that had already called for more Open Science and Open Access activities in 2015 and 2016,“ Stefan Hanslik reveals. The Open Access Network Austria (OANA), consisting of representatives of Austrian universities, had already made a clear recommendation that Austria needed an Open Sccience strategy. In addition, in the process of European harmonisation in digitalisation, the Information Sharing Law was passed at government level. This initiative brought together several stakeholders, including the Wissenschaftsfond FWF. So why not continue working together right away? At this favorable moment, it seemed clear to all parties involved, that an initiative had to be taken in the field of Open Science. As is often the case, a policy process was also promoted by the favor of the hour.

Relevance of informal structures

The example of Austria illustrates very well what has already been made clear in the other contributions to this series: Policy processes are rarely driven by a single factor, but often by several stimuli. These can have a delayed effect and sometimes even partially contradict each other. The example of Austria shows that informal associations can play a key role in policy processes. For example, it was the EOSC Café, which was initially conceived as an informal grouping for the exchange of information on open science topics, in which ideas for the Austrian Open Access Policy were formulated. „Austria is not large and the university landscape is quite manageable“ states Stefan Hanslik. At the operational level, a particular challenge was to build consensus among the relevant ministries, the  Federal Ministry for Education, Research and Science (BMBWF), the Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Economic Location (Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung und Wirtschaftsstandort BMDW, until 2020) and the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technogy (BMK).

In this process, the EOSC Café, this informal group, attained the status of a very important working tool. Because there, we were able to elaborate ideas, involve all the important players little by little and prepare the adoption of the policy. That would have been very difficult without this group and would have taken much more time.

The launch of the EOSC in Vienna in 2018 marked a turning point for this group and finally led to its institutionalisation. Today there are more working tools than the EOSC Café: An EOSC wiki and a productive EOSC Support Office Austria as well as Open Science Austria. In the meantime, EOSC Café Austria invites guests, including from the European Commission or other European countries and sees itself as an open forum. „The EOSC Café has established itself and is used again and again to deal with questions around Open Science. It is an Austrian melting pot of Open Science-affine people and very dynamic as a group,“ Stefan Hanslik tells us.

As before, this group is open: anyone involved in Open Science can participate. Amongst others, the TU Vienna, the University of Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Natural History Museum Vienna and other institutions are involved.

The Austrian Strategy: Designable Framework, Supporting Measures

It was also with the help of this group, the EOSC-Café, that the Austrian Open Science Policy was initially created. This Policy serves as a framework helping individual institutions to develop their own strategies.  „The policy may therefore seem a bit like a toothless tiger“, admits Stefan Hanslik, “but the intention was to first bring all stakeholders to the table under the umbrella of agreeable guidelines. At the same time, it was clear all along that we wanted to keep the policy open for more elaborate positions that individual institutions, such as universities, already have and can develop further.“

Additionally, this Open Science Strategy is flanked by numerous practical measures: Activities around Open Science are financed and supported, for example by a funding program to support the digital transformation, in which more than 50 million euros are spent on 5 large projects. Although this program expires in 2024, Stefan Hanslik said that follow-up programs are already being considered.

Researchers, libraries and research funders

However, even well-funded programs are of no help if researchers do not agree. As in other countries, many researchers in Austria are very committed by heart. But – from Stefan Hanslik’s point of view – even more interesting are those who are not yet sufficiently informed. „There is a strong need to catch up across all sectors in our country,“ he diagnoses the situation. „For example, I recently had a conversation with a quantum physicist who had more questions than answers and a large need for information. That’s when I’m glad that Open Science Austria (OSA) exists. They set themselves the goal of tackling this, and reaching out into the finest roots of the research world, across all disciplines.“

Equally important and differently developed are the libraries. „We involve them, but with varying degrees of success“ notes Stefan Hanslik. The situation is different when it comes to research funders. “Here, Austria’s benefit is that there are only two funding agencies: the Fond zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). Both are committed to research infrastructure programs.” Stefan Hanslik emphasizes that they have successfully put a lot of thought into PlanS and have thus helped to shape the Austrian policy process.

Challenges

But policy processes are never over, as Stefan Hanslik remarks: „Our policy lacks examples and concrete measures for almost all topics.“ Another well-known challenge in the area of Open Science is monitoring. Here, too, helpful initiatives already exist at European level, such as the EOSC Observatory Monitoring System. „We will feed this monitoring system with our data and create a Country Profile. This will also influence budget decisions, because we want to know to what extent what needs to be funded. But there’s often a question about how to quantify certain Open Science activities.“

What can we learn from Austria?

Austria and Germany are similar in many respects. Both countries have well-developed and very active open access and open science networks, a level of knowledge on openness that varies from discipline to discipline, and a federal system that can help shape decisions and policy processes in a participatory way. In addition to these similarities, however, Stefan Hanslik points to some clear differences between Austria and Germany: „I feel envious when I look at the research infrastructure and the research data infrastructure in Germany“ he admits. But he also sees that Germany has other scale dimensions to deal with. This makes it more difficult, especially in a federal system, to get stakeholders, responsible parties at EU and at governance level at the same table and to coordinate different interests. For the development of a federal policy process in Germany, he advises to take a close look at actors who have been able to implement successful policy models in Europe. „That way, you can learn from each other.“ Indeed, it was precisely this intention that motivated us to conduct this and other interviews. However, a preliminary evaluation of our interviews and a discussion with representatives of the federal and state governments of Germany led to the conclusion that no policy model of another country is transferable to the complex German situation. On the other hand, the international comparison offers inspiration and points to aspects that would otherwise have been ignored. Austria’s early adaptation of the Open Science idea and its integration with the European Union’s science policy can provide helpful and interesting hints here.

Open4DE Spotlight on Finland – An advanced culture of openness shaped by the research community

Authors: Malte Dreyer, Martina Benz and Maike Neufend

Open Access (OA) is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of open access and open science (OA and OS) in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide Open Access strategies.

After starting this series with an article about Lithuania and Sweden, we now continue our journey around the Baltic Sea. Our next stop is Finland:

In a comparison of European Openness strategies, Finland stands out for its sophisticated system of coordinated policy measures. While other countries have a strategy that bundles different aspects of the Openness culture into one central policy, the Finnish model impresses with unity in diversity. The website of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, which was set up specifically to provide information on Open Science (OS), lists four national policies on OS and research in Finland. In addition to a policy for data and methods, a policy on open access to scholary publications and a policy on open education and educational ressources document activity at a high level. The openness culture in Finland targets all stages of scientific communication but also teaching and learning. In addition, a national information portal provides orientation on publication venues, projects and publicly funded technical infrastructures. It is an exemplary tool to get an overview of the constantly growing Open Access (OA) and OS ecosystem and its numerous products and projects.

OA&OS-culture in Finland

Such an advanced stage in the development of openness can only be achieved through the persistence of political goals. The basis for this is a political and scientific culture whose fundamental values favour the idea of openness. OS and OA are seen as aspects of a comprehensive, science-ethical framework that unites issues such as internationalisation, gender equality and integrity of science in the term “responsible science”. In its guidelines Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland the Finnish National Board of Research Integrity (TENK) establishes this connection between responsible conduct in science and openness. The 2012 version which is still valid today states:

2. The methods applied for data acquisition as well as for research and evaluation, conform to scientific criteria and are ethically sustainable. When publishing the research results, the results are communicated in an open and responsible fashion that is intrinsic to the dissemination of scientific knowledge (highlighting by the authors of this article).

“Responsible Science is an umbrella-term. Policy-making under this umbrella is based on the integrity of scientists, not on judicial decisions and laws,” says Sami Niinimäki, contact person for OS at the Finnish Ministry of Science and interview partner of Open4DE. In his role as a counsellor of education in the department of higher education and science policy in the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture Sami Niinimäki is well-versed in all issues related to science and education, funding and evidence-based policy-making. Quality assurance is also a defining theme for the ministry’s activities, Sami says. We meet via zoom on a Friday at the end of March to talk about Finland’s Open Science policy for an hour. A early spring day in Helsinki, Sami Niinimäki tells about the history of Finnish OS and OA policy-making: 

Data as a starting point

“We started with the data. In other places, it begins with publications but in Finland we invested first in the data infrastructure” says Sami Niinimäki, naming a special feature of the development of OA in Finland right at the beginning of our conversation. First discussions about opening up science date back to the 1990s, when people were aware of the benefits of OA&OS but had not yet pushed ahead with the development at a larger scale. The topic became prominent in the 2000s when the ministry, which at that time was responsible for the system architecture of science communication, realised that open data also represented an exciting field of activity. The first ministerial initiative in this field began at the end of the decade and ran from 2009 to 2014. Among other things, it created the conditions for long-term digital preservation. Together with the open science and research initiative from 2013 to 2017, these programmes created infrastructures, researched scientific cultures and conducted surveys on the maturity of OA and OS developments. Researching the field led to a kind of friendly competition among institutional actors and, at the level of individual institutions, had the positive effect of making their own openness culture thematically and publicly transparent, Sami Niinimäki tells us.

From the Ministry to the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies

The actual policy process, in which research funders, universities, colleges and other institutions work on national policy documents, is today coordinated by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, a national co-operative body for learned societies in Finland. According to its own information, the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies has a membership of 293 societies and four academies from all branches of arts and sciences, in total 260 000 individual members, and also supports and develops the role of its members in science policy discussions. Expert groups on science policy issues meet under its umbrella, currently these are “The Committee for Public Information”, “The Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity”, which is under the self-governance of the scientific community, and the “Publication Forum”. In addition, the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies is active in creating roadmaps and organises so-called forum meetings. “The change of responsibility for our policy process from the Ministry to the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies was a kind of natural evolution”, Sami Niinimäki points out. But in retrospect, this development made total sense:

“The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies hosts the research integrity board since the 1990s and their work relies on the integrity in the research community: why not include OS in a visible way in the same package? Possibly this happened per accident, but we had to go through these steps to reach a higher maturity level. In the ministry we failed to reach the research community, our audience included the same 400 people we talked to every time and with the Federation, the message reached further audiences, even trade unions.”

The change of responsibilities, the inclusion of new actors and the re-organisation of running processes is nothing new in the eyes of policy research. According to Sybille Münch’s Research on Interpretative Policy-Analysis (2016), policy processes rarely run as smoothly as the theory of the policy cycle suggests. In the Finnish case, however, the change of responsibility seems to have been achieved with little loss: Even more, the linking of the policy process to the research-community has led to productive participation of the target group. A manageable time commitment combined with the prospect of influence motivates stakeholders to this day to help shape policy processes through active committee work, says Sami Niinimäki.

During the interview, we repeatedly learn how important a culture of participation is for the Finnish model. Exemplary is not only the management of the policy process through an organization which represents the interests of scientists, but also the implementation of Plan S, which was informed by an open consultation at the University of Helsinki.

Problems and challenges

Problems do exist, however. In Finland, for example, the implementation of the European guidelines on the secondary publication right has failed – initial attempts in this direction failed in particular because of the resistance of trade union and copyright lobby groups. Sami Niinimäki is convinced that resistance in the community can be broken by communicating the goals clearly – often resistance is caused by misunderstandings. However, Finland compensates the absence of a legal basis by consistency in practicing green OA. “Our goal is to publish national OA journals on a common platform in journal.fi” says Sami Niinimäki.

The important function of repositories in Finland is well known and has attracted attention from German colleagues before. But it is not only the infrastructure that is important: Sami Niinimäki mentions research funding as another important challenge in the implementation of OA. Moreover, ultimatively, it always comes down to the decisions of researchers: “Researchers understand that they have to produce impact and this gives incentives to use open copyright licences.” The fact that it all depends on the scientists also applies to research evaluation, a central field of work for policy-makers as Sami Niinimäki states:

“When you look at all the issues each of them lead to the core of the assessment  problem. This needs to be solved. In Finland we are on a good way, research organisations have signed the DORA-declaration and we have a national policy on research assessment, wich is very much compliant with DORA.”

With the signing of DORA, Finland is a step ahead of Germany: here, only a few research organisations have signed this document. But much more can be done also in Finland. Following Sami Niinimäki, it would be desirable for a peer review to be seen as equivalent to a publication. At the very least, a way should be found to also map these activities in reputation-building metrics. A proposal that not only seems relevant and attractive for Finland. The EU has already taken up this issue, among others in its scoping report on research assessment systems.

Taking stock: what can we learn from Finland?

The Finnish path shows that OA is favoured by a publishing culture in which repository-based OA became the standard early on. Participatory processes also promote acceptance in the long term. The fact that OA and OS are supported by broad acceptance is not least because of the numerous opportunities for participation through which stakeholders can get involved in policy processes. As mentioned above, the formulation and enforcement of the rules of research integrity is in the hands of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies – an organization representing the scientists. The participatory implementation of PlanS, also mentioned above, is also evidence of a culture of participation. “Starting point is the openness and transparency of science as well as the mutual trust between researchers and research organisations. The model of self-regulation works well in democracies akin to Finland” is written on the webpage of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity. At the same time, an accompanying, careful regulation is also beneficial, says Sami Niinimäki:

“Research funders can call the play, if research funders show maturity, then the organisations that benefit from their funding also change their culture. It is a domino process. And this dynamic also played out at the European level.”

Whereas in Finland the rule of government is “as much as necessary, as little as possible”, the rule of self-government is “as much as possible, as little as necessary”. This creates a domino effect that develops a momentum of its own. Now, of course, with regard to Germany, the question is which dominoes must fall here in order to further advance the process of conversion to OA. Finland shows that the connection to researchers is of particular importance. In Germany, unfortunately, the professional societies have not yet played a leading role in the conversion to OA. A workshop, which was held with representatives of the professional societies as part of the Open4DE project, showed that the interests and needs of the individual professional societies are also very different.  Last but not least, a representative body similar to the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies is missing here, which would bring these different interests under one roof. However, networking nodes such as the Open Access Network could play a strategically exposed role here. The future will show how feasible the already outlined ways of involving scientists in Germany are.

Literature

Open Science Coordination in Finnland, Federation of Finnished Learned Societies (2020). „Declaration for Open Science and Research (Finnland) 2020–2025.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://edition.fi/tsv/catalog/view/79/29/192-1.

European Commission (2021). „Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Towards a reform of the research assessment system: scoping report.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/707440.

European University Association asbl. (without year). „The EUA Open Science Agenda 2025.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/eua%20os%20agenda.pdf.

Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity. „Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland. Guidelines of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity 2012.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://tenk.fi/sites/tenk.fi/files/HTK_ohje_2012.pdf.

Ilva, Jyrki (2020). „Open access on the rise at Finnish universities“. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://blogs.helsinki.fi/thinkopen/oa-statistics-2019/.

National Open Science and Research Steering Group und Science and Research Steering Group (2020). „National Policy and Executive Plan by the Research Community in Finland for 2020–2025.“ Accessed June 7, 2022. https://avointiede.fi/sites/default/files/2020-03/openaccess2019.pdf.

Ministry of Education and Culture (2019). „Atlas of Open Science and Research in Finland 2019 Evaluation of openness in the activities of higher education institutions, research institutes, research-funding organisations, Finnish academic and cultural institutes abroad and learned societies and academies Final report.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/161990. 

Morka, Agata and Gatti, Rupert (2021). „Finland“. In Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe: A Landscape Study. PubPub. Accessed June 7, 2022.  https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.2da5044f.

Münch, Sybille (2016). „Interpretative Policy-Analyse: eine Einführung. Lehrbuch.” Wiesbaden, doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-03757-4.

Open Science and Research Coordination (2019). „Open Access to Scholarly Publications. National Policy and Executive Plan by the Research Community in Finland for 2020–2025 (1).” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://doi.org/10.23847/isbn.9789525995343.

Ministry of Education and Culture (2014). „Open science and research leads to surprising discoveries and creative insights: Open science and research roadmap 2014–2017.” Accessed June 7, 2022. https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/75210/okm21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Pölönen, Janne; Laakso, Mikael; Guns, Raf; Kulczycki, Emanuel and Sivertsen, Gunnar (2020). „Open access at the national level: A comprehensive analysis of publications by Finnish researchers“. In: Quantitative Science Studies, 17, 1–39. Accessed June 7, 2022.  https://doi.org/10/gg927d.

Open4DE Spotlight on Sweden: How a Bottom-up Open Access Strategy Works without a National Policy

Authors: Malte Dreyer, Martina Benz and Maike Neufend

Open Access (OA) is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of open access and open science (OA and OS) in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide Open Access strategies. We continue our series with a report on Sweden’s Open Access landscape.

The Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe are renown for having developed Open Access and Open Science (OA and OS) particularly well. Our spotlight on Lithuania at the beginning of this series made clear that committed policy-making is an important precondition for the successful implementation of OA and OS. Finland, too, has created a sophisticated system of various national policy papers on opening up research and teaching. The policy process in which they were developed is itself a tool to promote openness in science. We will report on Finland’s strategy in this series in the coming weeks.

Sweden differs from its Baltic neighbors as it has not established a nation-wide binding OA strategy through a policy paper or law. Nevertheless, Sweden has always been on a very good path towards the goal of opening up science. Sweden was one of the early adopters of transformative agreements and today can build on a broad acceptance of OA in the scientific community – despite the lack of a national policy. How can this be?

We wanted to explore what strategies Sweden is applying to make OA and OS a breakthrough and met Wilhelm Widmark to talk to him about the Swedish research ecosystem. Wilhelm Widmark is the director of the Stockholm University Library and has played an important role developing OA and OS at his own institution. He has also been involved for years in various national committees for the implementation of OA and OS: He is Vice-Chairman of the Swedish Bibsam Consortium and member of the Swedish Rectors Conference’s Open Science working group. Internationally, he was a member of the LIBER  Steering Board and a member of EUA’s Expert Group on Open Science. Since December 2021, he has also been a director of the EOSC Association.

The history of OA in Sweden

The history of OA in Sweden is characterized by very committed people, Wilhelm Widmark points out at the beginning of our conversation. Main drivers have always been enthusiasts who cared about the idea. One could therefore conclude that OA in Sweden has traditionally come from bottom-up. According to Wilhelm Widmark, it was indeed library directors who started it all, not the government. In their exchange forum, the SUHF Rectors Conference, they developed a recommendation in 2003 to deal more intensively with OA in the future, because they saw this topic coming. The already ongoing journal crisis gave a necessary impetus and lent the whole development an additional ideological dimension. In view of the constantly rising prices, it also became clear to the scientists that OA and OS has a value in itself. With the help of the libraries, they first tried to go the green way and started using repositories. However, it quickly became apparent that the workload on researchers was too high to achieve success this way. Only between 10% and 15% OA could be achieved with repository-based OA. Around 2015, therefore, the discussion about Gold OA also began to rise up in Sweden.

The plan to enable OA through negotiations with publishers led to discussions in the rectors conference. It quickly became clear that this form of negotiation could only take place with the involvement of university management. The network that emerged soon spanned the entire country. Today, there is a steering committee in which university rectors and people from the university administrations are represented in addition to the library directors. The National Library of Sweden, where the steering committee is located, plays a significant role in the transformation process, unlike in Germany, for example. The success of this model speaks for itself: Sweden is already one of the countries with the most transformation agreements. By 2026, more than 80% of publications are expected to appear in Gold OA through transformative deals.

The future of OA and OS in Sweden

The OA transformation is an ongoing process with changing goals. Wilhelm Widmark seems to get thoughtful at this point: “The question is when one can claim that a transformation is complete”, he remarks and points to upcoming challenges. These include the common search for alternatives to commercial publication service providers. An alternative to commercial OA could lie in the design of a publication platform. The times seem right for such projects: “Publishers really want to keep the transformative agreements as their business model. But the researchers are really annoyed of the high level of the publication fees” is how Wilhelm Widmark describes the current mood in his country. And in his view, the tested interaction between infrastructure providers and scientists will also be decisive for the next stage of the development: “The university management has the question on their table and the EU is our political driver. But it shouldn’t be organized top-down, it must be driven by researchers. The transformation is done for the researchers and thus the process must be created based on the needs of the researchers.” Under these conditions, the coordinating side needs to address the task of creating structures that promote and enable this cultural change.

Wilhelm Widmark believes that the involvement of all stakeholders is also necessary in those areas where he believes Sweden still has potential for development. Here he mentions, among other things, the topic of open data and especially the monitoring of opening processes in this area, investments in digital infrastructures, the promotion of citizen science or the topic of open educational resources. Furthermore, investments should not only be made in material resources, but also in skills. Universities in particular are called upon to provide competent support for researchers through data stewards and their own training programs. But the training of trainers must also be further professionalised and accredited: “We need a curriculum for data stewards and career paths for this staff. Not only the infrastructure is important, the skills are almost as important as the infrastructure,” Wilhelm Widmark is convinced.

Sweden and the National Policy Plan

The deep conviction that policy processes must be thought of from the implementation point of view and should be shaped by the players who are at the beginning of the scientific value chain corresponds to a critical attitude towards national policies. In contrast, a national OA and OS policy developed with all stakeholders, as is currently being discussed in Sweden, runs the risk of becoming self-serving and binding important capacities: “In the beginning the government wanted an OA and OS policy. The research council and the national library suggested a common OS policy together with the universities and the directors. But I am not sure if it is the right thing to do because it will take a long time and the work to be done is actually more important than the policy itself.”

What we can learn from Sweden

In our conversation, it becomes clear to us what maxims this openness-strategy follows: Prescriptions from above are avoided. Instead, common ground is identified through discussions with all participants and differences are not emphasized. In order to achieve goals that everyone considers desirable, the tools for their implementation are decided at each individual institution or organisation. In this way, specific needs can be addressed and researchers and educators have the opportunity to participate directly in these policy processes. On the last point, the Swedish strategy seems similar to the approach taken in Germany.

The price of this autonomy and particularism at the institutional level is a great heterogeneity of measures. Wilhelm Widmark sees this himself: “The national library compared all the different OA policies, and they are not aligned at all”. But he continues straight away: “Everything important happens at the universities. And of course the research field provides norms, but the researchers are not really interested in these norms but care about what is going on at their universities.” The benefit of such a strategy is that the discussion about OA and OS is kept alive. Perhaps this effect has also contributed to the fact that OA and OS have been met with such broad acceptance in Sweden.

Further Reading

Political Commitment toward Open Science: Open4DE Spotlight on the Open Access Landscape in France

Authors: Maike Neufend, Martina Benz, Malte Dreyer

Open access is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of open access (OA) in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide open access strategies.

The open access movement in France plays a vital role since the beginning in the European region. Already around the 2000s French research institutions launched the Revues.org platform (1999) – now OpenEdition – for open access journals primarily in Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2001 the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) started running HAL open archive (2001), a repository open to all disciplinary fields. In 2003 the CNRS signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. During many years open access was a matter of personal involvement from individuals within institutions, says Pierre Mounier, deputy director of OpenEdition and coordinator of OPERAS:

The personal commitment based on political values works locally, but at one point you reach a glass ceiling. You don’t get that general movement because it is only a matter of individuals. It really changed in France…

In 2021 France has already published the Second National Plan for Open Science. Generalising Open Science in France 2021-2024. And during the recently held Open Science European Conference (OSEC) the French Committee for Open Science presented the Paris Call on Research Assessment, calling for „an assessment system where research proposals, researchers, research units and research institutions are evaluated on the basis of their intrinsic merits and impact […]“. In line with the general development across Europe, according to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and other policy papers, Open Science is no longer a question of few committed librarians, information scientists and researchers, but part of the national strategy on scholarly communication.

What can be achieved by a national strategy?

In Germany multiple stakeholders publish their own policies and strategies, committing to open access practices and values. Marin Dacos, national open science coordinator at the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, emphasizes that a national strategy is a strong signal no matter what, because multiple stakeholders receive concrete directions by such strategies. In addition, it might be more efficient to speak as a country regarding these issues, in particular at the international level, f.e. within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Commission and The Council for National Open Science Coordination (CoNOSC), a network of national coordinators in the UN-European region supported by SPARC Europe.

Looking at France, for certain topics national negotiations seem more convenient: Considering investment in green open access or diamond open access, it is more realistic to achieve progress on the national level instead of federal, local or institutional levels only. Setting open access on the national agenda allows for strategic planning. This argument is not only supported by the content of the two national plans for open science in France from 2018 and 2021, but also on the recently published Action Plan for Diamond Open Access „to further develop and expand a sustainable, community-driven Diamond OA scholarly communication ecosystem“. Prepared by OPERAS, PLAN S, Science Europe and French National Research Agency (ANR) the plan was commented by experts of a workshop sponsored by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in preparation for the OSEC conference. A summary of this conference and links to recordings are available online.

The National Plan and its infrastructure

But how did the first national plan actually come about in 2018? After the election in 2017, Frédérique Vidal became Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation. Since 2017 Marin Dacos is open science advisor to the director-general for research and innovation at the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation. He has been highly involved in the writing process of the French Open Science Plan. The open science committee was founded in 2019, consisting of a steering committee of open science, a permanent secretariat for open science (SPSO), colleges and expert groups as well as the forum for open science.

The steering committee meets 3–4 times a year to make strategic decisions related to the national strategy, acts as the Council of Partners of the National Fund for Open Science (GIS FNSO) and decides which initiatives to fund. The permanent secretariat headed by the national coordinator for open science gathers monthly to prepare the work of the steering committee, and to ensure the implementation of its conclusions. It coordinates the work of the colleges of the open science committee, oversees the editorial board of the ouvrirlascience.fr website, and monitors the progress of ongoing projects for the operational implementation of the national open science policy. The colleges and expert groups are standing bodies composed of experts on various aspects of the national open science policy. They review issues, propose guidelines, issue opinions, and initiate and lead projects. The forum for open science supports the committee by bringing in the experience of professionals from academia and research institutions. It provides a space for dialogue, exchange and development of shared expertise. As Morka and Gatti point out, the open science committee is one of the „main platforms where librarians engage in discussions on open access“.

Moreover, in the French case, a national fund (Fonds National pour la Science Ouverte, FNSO) is in place since the first National Plan on Open Science (2018) funded by „ministerial allocations and voluntary contributions from institutions of higher education, research and innovation, as well as contributions from foundations and patrons“. Through this fund the steering committee for open science can incentivize concrete projects to foster implementation of measures articulated in the national plan, „it helps to target specific actions, an important transformation effect to help move forward“, says Mounier. 48 projects have been selected by the steering committee, 22 projects in 2019 mainly on research infrastructures, digital platforms and editorial initiatives and 26 projects in 2021 focusing on editorial platforms and structures as well as editorial content. Beside the fact that the fund is limited in its financial power, it is an important addition for a successful implementation of a national strategy.

What is there to consider for the German landscape?

One important lesson to learn from France refers to the administration of open access within the ministry. Open science and open access is highly coordinated inside the ministry and thus funds are not administered differently for these closely linked topics. However, the level of diversity included in the French national strategy is something to look up to. This is also visible in how the implementation of the national strategy is monitored in France. One aim of the French national open science strategy is the objective of a 100% open access rate in 2030 and progress is monitored on the national level. But different from the German Open Access Monitor the French version relies only on „using reliable and controlled open data“ like data from Unpaywall, DOAJ or OpenAPC – source databases like Web of Science or Scopus are not included. In addition, the French Open Science Monitor aims at including all scientific output and thus shows not only open access articles published in peer-reviewed journals but proceedings, book chapters, books and preprints as well. Sorting according to disciplines and their open access output is presented and the language of publication is shown as well. It is positive to see that both, the German and the French monitor, include diamond open access and thus differentiate it from full APC gold open access already.

But what works well in France is not necessarily the right path for Germany. University presses are well-developed in France, while the national publishing platform OpenEdition provides an infrastructure to publish open access books as well as journals. In Germany a decentralized library system operates quite autonomous on institutional levels, with different library consortia across federal states. A national publishing platform like OpenEdition may look like a desirable model, but as Pierre Mounier points out, does it really make sense for Germany? An important impulse from our interviews with French open science experts has been the question, how we can use the federated infrastructure in Germany as an advantage and not an obstacle for a national open access agenda.

References

(2017). „Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity.“ Accessed April 6, 2022. https://jussieucall.org/jussieu-call/.

Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche  et de l’Innovation (2018). „National Plan for Open Science.“ Accessed April 6, 2022. https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/National-Plan-for-Open-Science_A4_20180704.pdf.

Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche  et de l’Innovation (2021). „Second National Plan for Open Science Generalising Open Science in France 2021-2024.“ Accessed April 6, 2022. https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/second-national-plan-for-open-science/,

Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation (2022). „Paris Call on Research Assessment.“ Accessed April 6, 2022. https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/paris-call-on-research-assessment.

Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation (2022). „Action Plan for Diamond open access.“ Accessed April 6, 2022. https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/action-plan-for-diamond-open-access-2.

Mounier, Pierre (2019). „From Open Access as a Movement to Open Science as a Policy.“ Presented at the 2019 2nd AEUP Conference: (Re-)Shaping University Presses and Institutional Publishing. Profiles – Challenges – Benefits, Brno, Czech Republic, October 3. Accessed April 6, 2022. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3471026.

Morka, Agata, and Rupert Gatti (2021). „France.“ In Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe: A Landscape Study. PubPub. Accessed April 6, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.6df6495e.

Open4DE Spotlight on the Open Access Landscape in Lithuania

Authors: Malte Dreyer, Maike Neufend and Martina Benz

Open Access is developing in an area of tension between institutional and funder policies, the economics of publishing and last but not least the communication practices of research disciplines. In a comparison across European countries, very dynamic and diverse approaches and developments can be observed. Furthermore, this international and comparative perspective helps us to assess the state of Open Access (OA) in Germany. In this series of Open4DE project blog posts, we will summarize what we have learned in our in-depth conversations with experts on developing and implementing nationwide Open Access strategies.

We start our series with a report on Lithuania’s Open Access landscape.

Probably the most important document for the development of Open Access in Lithuania is the Resolution Regarding the Approval of the Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data, published in 2016. Because of its remarkable concreteness, the resolution is, together with the French National Plan on Open Science, described as „the most high level [policy document] of all“ in the 2019 SPARC Europe Report (Sveinsdottir, T. et al. 2020, S. 30). For example, the openness of data is made a standard (§23), concrete responsibilities for the implementation and monitoring of measures are named (§20, §29) and reporting obligations are regulated (§26).

Additionally, the Law on Higher Education and Research of the Republic of Lithuania states that „in order to ensure the quality of research conducted with funds from the state budget, to ensure transparency in the use of funds from the state budget and to promote scientific progress, the results of all research conducted in state higher education and research institutions must be disclosed publicly […]” (Article 51).

In an interview with Ieva Ceseviciute, we asked her about the state of an Open Access policy in Lithuania and whether she could confirm our optimistic view of things from a domestic perspective. Ieva Ceseviciute is Head of Research Information Services at the Library at Kaunas University of Technology and has been instrumental in OpenAIRE since 2015. In addition, she is involved in the Research Data Alliance and is thus an expert on Open Science in Lithuania.

Ieva Ceseviciute sees a general problem in the fact that so far no mechanisms have yet been developed to enforce the Resolution Regarding the Approval of the Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data which has been released by the Research Council of Lithuania in 2016. It should also be noted that this resolution is the guideline of the most important research funding body and not an overarching national policy. However, there is agreement in Lithuania that this policy needs to be revised and adapted to the more recent developments in the publication system. Moreover, it is broadly recognised in Lithuania that a national policy is important and desirable. This situation was a good opportunity for putting a national policy process on the agenda.

Hence the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports has established a task force whose purpose is to develop a national Open Access policy. The group was formed in 2019, and started its work in 2020 with a series of meetings, but was then interrupted by the pandemic and the recent change of government in Lithuania. Currently, The Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data are being revised by the Research Council of Lithuania. In support of this discussion, a survey of the present state is seen as a mandatory precondition for future strategy proposals. In particular, surveys have been carried out among various stakeholders and the research offices of relevant institutions in order to determine the development statuses and needs.

What can we learn from Lithuania?

In Ieva Ceseviciute’s view, the biggest obstacle on the way to a culture of openness is the fact that OA has not been integrated into incentive systems, which makes it unattractive to comply with Open Acess policies. Researchers are not yet expected to publish OA in the national context; changing this requires profound cultural change and new publishing practices. So far, few researchers have understood that the standards of Open Science and OA offer advantages to them. Although numerous information events are organised, raising awareness on Open Access has proven to be a challenge. A national policy can be an important instrument here. “Change takes time – cultural change takes time, it is not possible without the instrument of policies” says Ieva Ceseviciute.

At the same time, it is important that OA is based on a strong mandate in the ongoing national policy process. This requires a good balance between incentives and sanctions. Among the drivers of OA in Lithuania, Ieva Ceseviciute lists the support measures and legal frameworks of the European Union. In Lithuania, researchers are often involved in European research contexts that are particularly committed to the idea of openness. This is one of the ways how an intrinsic interest in Open Science is generated.

Further strong guidelines would certainly be helpful here. Top-down guidelines can accelerate cultural change in the national community. In this context, it is very important, says Ieva Ceseviciute, to identify stakeholders and name responsibilities – for every single step and measure in the policy process: „If this is not part of your policy, your policy won’t work“.

References

Dovidonyte, Rasa (2019). Implementation of Open Science in Lithuania. Nordic Perspectives on Open Science, August. https://doi.org/10.7557/11.4828

Sveinsdottir, Thordis, Proudman, Vanessa, & Davidson, Joy (2020). An Analysis of Open Science Policies in Europe, v6. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4005612