The European Council - Competitiveness Council met May 26-27, 2016 with a two hour discussion about open science on the 27th.
Their conclusions on "The transition towards an Open Science system" (document 9526/16) have been published, of which particularly notable are
12. AGREES to further promote the mainstreaming of open access to scientific publications by
continuing to support a transition to immediate open access as the default by 2020, using the
various models possible and in a cost-effective way, without embargoes or with as short as
possible embargoes, and without financial and legal barriers, taking into account the diversity
in research systems and disciplines, and that open access to scientific publications should be
achieved in full observance of the principle that no researcher should be prevented from
publishing; ...
14. UNDERLINES that research data originating from publicly funded research projects could be
considered as a public good, and ENCOURAGES the Member States, the Commission and
stakeholders to set optimal reuse of research data as the point of departure, whilst recognising
the needs for different access regimes because of Intellectual Property Rights, personal data
protection and confidentiality, security concerns, as well as global economic competitiveness
and other legitimate interests. Therefore, the underlying principle for the optimal reuse of
research data should be: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
A high-level summary of the discussion and conclusions can be found on pages 12-13 of document 9357/16, Outcome of the Council Meeting, including
The Commission is deploying efforts on the development of a European Open Science Agenda that will include three main lines of action:
– The setting up of an Open Science Policy Platform as a high-level expert group focusing on framework conditions for an open science-friendly environment
– The promotion of open access for the results of scientific research and underlying data, mainly with a pilot project on open research data under the Horizon 2020 research programme
– The setting of standards for the management, interoperability and quality of scientific data to progress towards a European Open Science Cloud
There is also a summary in the main results
Chairing the Council, Sander Dekker, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, made the following statement: "Open Science is a topic which is very dear to our hearts. During the Netherlands presidency, we have aimed at bringing Europe to the forefront of global change and at leading the transition to a new way of doing research and science based on openness, big data and cloud computing. ...
and in the press release "All European scientific articles to be freely accessible by 2020"
Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker ... "The time for talking about open access is now past. With these agreements, we are going to achieve it in practice." ...
From 2020, all scientific publications on the results of publicly funded research must be freely available. It also must be [possible] to optimally reuse research data. To achieve that, the data must be made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues.
and there is a brief summary video for the entire meeting.
The membership of the Open Science Policy Platform was also announced. Feedback from civil society indicates some dissatisfaction that the membership is primarily institutional.
The video of the two-hour discussion is available, with key statements indicated in the sidebar (under "Live updates"). Click on "Open Science System" on the video page to go directly to the specific session, or go to 23:34 into the video (it is supposed to be possible to make a link to part of the webcast but it doesn't seem to be working).
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Previously:
April 20, 2016 Open Science Cloud launched by European Commission
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