Policies on Open Science (OS) and FAIR data are cornerstones on the road to Open Science and crucial elements of the ‘readiness’ or sustainability of countries and initiatives concerning the implementation of EOSC. Whether there are national and institutional policies in place, what they address and what their consequences are and more generally, the status and developments of the open science policy framework are considered essential to making progress in the OS movement and establishing OS practices in the research community.
"Policies and regulations concerning open science and data management are important instruments for fostering data sharing. Funding bodies and universities are particularly relevant in this regard as they can encourage, promote, and create the basis for researchers to apply open data principles. Furthermore, they have the means to enforce regulations regarding the handling of data on associated researchers and to make open data practices more attractive to their researchers." Lisa Hönegger (University of Vienna)
The EOSC-Pillar webinar held on 27 October 2020 aimed at outlining existing research on OS policies as well as getting insights from experts working in the field.
The focus of the webinar was on the following questions, extremely important for the wider EOSC community:
- What are the effects of policies and why are policies important?
- What are the interdependencies of national and institutional policies?
- What are the consequences for researchers for (not) complying with policies? What are the incentives for researchers to comply with policies?
- What are the lessons learned from the open access movement and the adoption of open access policies?
The EOSC-Pillar team at the University of Vienna produced a summary of the webinar, highlighting the main takeaways and contributions. This document was uploaded to the EOSC-Pillar Zenodo community.
"Policies are an important instrument to accelerate embedding FAIR into the research life cycle." Vanessa Proudman (SPARC Europe)
Image and text source: https://www.eosc-pillar.eu/news/role-policies-sustainable-eosc-webinar-report-zenodo