Alongside its communication on artificial intelligence (see other article), on Wednesday 25 April, the European Commission proposed a series of measures to facilitate access to public and private sector data, including in the area of science.
Public sector. The reform is built around revision of Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (PSI directive). This directive does not harmonise data access regimes which are matters of national responsibility but puts in place the right to re-use these data for goals other than those for which they were created or gathered.
The revised proposal restricts the situations in which a public company can levy a charge greater than the costs incurred; only a few rare public bodies, in particular in the cultural sector, will be able to charge above pro-rata marginal costs for dissemination. It requires member states to draw up open access plans to data resulting from publicly funded research and ensures that the research data that have been made public may be legally re-used within the scientific community and beyond. In addition, the new text makes provision, if necessary, for the development of technical solutions, such as application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide real-time access to data.
Private and scientific sectors. In relation to private sector data sharing, the Commission has published a communication entitled “Towards a common European data space” and a series of guidelines which deal with the technical, legal and professions aspects of data sharing within the B2B (among companies) and B2G (business to government) contexts.
With regard to the specific area of research, the Commission proposes updating the 2012 recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information. More particularly, it provides guidance on implementing online open access policies to fit with the goals of “open science”, on research and data management, on the development of a European Open Science Cloud and on text and data mining. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)