On Tuesday, 23 May, the European research ministers took an important step with regard to Member States’ commitment to open science and to improving the European Research Area (ERA) by adopting the conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing.
In its conclusions, the Council of the EU encourages promoting an open-access model for scientific publishing with no costs for either authors or readers.
Speaking on behalf of the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Swedish Minister for Education and Research Mats Persson stressed that the goal of open science should be the norm and that adopting this text would contribute to achieving this objective, which the Presidency considers a top priority with respect to research and innovation policy.
The minister pointed out that the benefits of accelerating the transition to an open-science model extend beyond the scientific community to society as a whole. Mr Persson used the example of how Covid-19 vaccines were developed to illustrate his point.
In addition, Minister Persson called his counterparts to action so these conclusions may be implemented. In his opinion, there are various possible steps to achieve this. He encouraged Member States to develop policies and strategies, share best practices, and introduce changes in scientific culture.
Vice-President of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič, responsible for interinstitutional relations and foresight, welcomed the adoption of these conclusions. He stressed that data resulting from publicly funded research and their reuse should be accessible for research purposes at no charge.
By way of reminder, the vice-president mentioned the work carried out in the context of Horizon Europe and the Open Research Europe platform so as to work towards open research.
Mr Šefčovič identified three challenges awaiting the research ministers. First, he stressed the importance of managing intellectual property rights in the field of research properly and, in particular, the importance of harmonising property rights for secondary publications.
He then called on ministers to maintain high standards for research, notably through peer review.
Finally, Mr Šefčovič encouraged them to have a shared European ambition to introduce more equity into the scientific publishing model. For example, the costs of publishing and accessing publications can be prohibitive for researchers in some of the new Member States, and according to the commissioner, this impedes freedom of research.
Link to the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/70m (Original version in French by Emilie Vanderhulst)