NB Scientific research data is not within the scope of the revised PSI Directive, however, it is a closely related topic that raises many of the same issues and so is included here

Outline

Open science is a huge and complex area wherein research performance has the public sector as one of its important consumer. In many cases the public sector cannot get up-to-date and precise information about ongoing research due to commercial interests or bad routine. The benefits of a national research evaluation platform makes scientific achievements discoverable and measurable, and thus can affect innovation, economics and education in the country.

Challenge

Open science is a huge and complex area gaining more and more momentum. It has some overlaps with PSI as scientific results and statistics are consumed by the public sector for strategic decisions, evaluations, education and research management. In many cases the public sector cannot get up-to-date and precise information about ongoing research due to commercial interests or bad routine. Currently, the collection of research results is fragmented, some domains have international networks, while other domains may remain without any national aggregator (especially in the area of humanities). This lack of information may lead to a situation when there is no correct view on either micro or macro level on the national research outcomes.

Solution

With the “Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science” the issues are revaled and signifcant effort will be put into finding and evaluating new solutions. Currently, many countries establish open access mandates to ensure the visibility of research activities on national level. This enables and encourages researchers to disclose more information about their work. As a next step, national research monitoring platforms can be built to collect and organize data about research. This can be done on several levels:

  • Sharing registry data about research results and publications
  • Sharing full texts of publications
  • Providing a platform to easily archive and share research experiments

Why is this a Best Practice?

Collecting information about research requires large-scale cooperation and infrastructure. As a key consumer of collected information, the public sector is suitable to make this effort. The benefits are also affecting the whole country as innovation and research are important for the economic growth. As a result, the scientific achievement becomes discoverable and measurable, which helps researchers in cooperation and improvement as well as funders to get statistics and overview. Validated scientometric data can also be used to assess individuals in case of assigning grants and degrees.

How do I implement this Best Practice?

A public sector body or a deidcated organization should take the role for guiding the process. A legal background is needed with several elements: declaration of mission, open access mandate, help to resolve copyright issues with publishers, regulations for data provision. An IT platform has to be established with central and distributed components. The IT requirements may vary in a large range depending on the tasks undertaken. The persistent archival of certain research experiments requires huge storage space and computing power. Furthermore, researchers need to be educated to understand why and how they need to open up their research.

Where has this best practice been implemented?

Country Implementation Contact Point
Sweden Swepub Peter Krantz
Hungary MTMT András Micsik, SZTAKI
Finland JUULI, Etsin
Netherlands Narcis

References

Local Guidance

This Best Practice is cited by, or is consistent with, the advice given within the following guides:

Contact Info

András Micsik, MTA SZTAKI

Issue Tracker

Any matters arising from this BP, including implementation experience, lessons learnt, places where it has been implemented or guides that cite this BP can be recorded and discussed on the project's GitHub repository