Research ministers discussed research infrastructures and open science
On Wednesday, 8 February, EU ministers responsible for research met on the final day of the informal meeting of competitiveness ministers in Stockholm.
During the meeting, the ministers held policy debates about two current issues: the use of data from research infrastructures and open access to scientific publications.
Research infrastructures is an important component of the innovation system, and Europe has invested large sums in such infrastructures in recent years. Research infrastructures are also a top priority for the current trio of French, Czech and Swedish Presidencies.
During the morning session, the ministers discussed how to strengthen and develop the use of research data from research infrastructures to meet various societal challenges and strengthen competitiveness.
Implementing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles in all research outputs and across disciplines is a significant undertaking for Europe, and requires changes in research culture and infrastructure. These changes must also align with international partners in like-minded regions and countries, and the ministers exchanged views on whether the EU should take action to accelerate this work.
“There is room for improvement when it comes to the share of research data that can be accessed and reused, so we can accelerate scientific progress and increase societal impact.”
Mats Persson. Swedish Minister for Education
Benefits and challenges of open science
The second policy debate of the day focused on open access to scientific publications, and how the digital revolution creates new opportunities for more efficient and effective scholarly publishing.
For almost 20 years, open access and open science have been priorities in the European Commission’s strategies, guidelines and recommendations, and a standard method of working under its research and innovation funding programmes.
Making scholarly publications rapidly accessible to all contributes to high-quality research. Therefore, providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed research publications under open licences should be the default. The ministers discussed the main challenges to achieving this goal, and the challenges to ensuring excellence and supporting diversity with open science as the norm.
“For many years, there has been intensive work on making publications openly published on the internet, and the share of articles published openly has gradually risen. However, there are issues needed to be dealt with, for example the high costs of publishing and of reading articles. Another issue is the fact that some journals don’t have good enough processes for securing the quality of the publications,” says Mr Persson.