The Council of the EU has recently adopted conclusions on research assessment and implementation of open science (the ‘conclusions’).
Adopted in June 2022, the three areas covered by the conclusions are: (I) Reform of research assessment systems in Europe; (II) European approach and capacities for academic publishing and scholarly communication; and (III) Development of multilingualism for European scholarly publications.
In drawing up the conclusions, the Council acknowledges, inter alia, that in order to accelerate the implementation and the impact of Open Science policies and practices across Europe, action has to be taken to move towards a renewed approach to research assessment, including incentive and reward schemes. Further, it underlines that it is in the interest of European citizens and the European economy to ensure a transparent and competitive market that enables private companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as publicly funded organisations such as universities, research organisations and learned societies, to contribute to, and benefit from, a shared research knowledge system.
The conclusions consider that the authors of research publications or their institutions should retain sufficient IPRs to ensure open access, leading to broader dissemination, valorisation and reuse of results improving the fair balance of the publishing business models. In addition, data and bibliographic databases used for research assessment should, in principle, be openly accessible, while tools and technical systems should enable transparency. It also stresses that subscription fees as well as open access publication fees when applied, should be transparent and commensurate with the publication services.
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