Focus on Open Science

Chapter XXVI: Frankfurt Book Fair

Dr. Paul Ayris, University College London, UK

Dr Ayris is Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services). He joined UCL in 1997.

Dr Ayris was the President of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries) 2010-14. He is Co-Chair of the LERU (League of European Research Universities) INFO Community. He chairs the OAI Organizing Committee for the Cern-Unige Workshops on Innovations in Scholarly Communication. Until 2020, he also chaired the JISC Collections’ Content Strategy Group. On 1 August 2013, Dr Ayris became Chief Executive of UCL Press. He attends the Provost and President’s Senior Management Team in UCL by nomination/request. He has a Ph.D. in Ecclesiastical History and publishes on English Reformation Studies. In 2019, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Presentation:

Open Science – a blueprint for the university in the 21st century?

This paper will look at the 8 pillars of Open Science, as defined by the European Commission and described in the LERU (League of European Research Libraries) Open Science Roadmap, and which be analysed in the forthcoming LERU paper on Best Practice in adopting Open Science principles and policies. What are the strengths and challenges in each of the 8 pillars of Open Science and what is the range of responses that universities could make? In this landscape, the paper will then look at four of the 8 pillars, Open Access Publishing, Research Data Management and Open data E-Infrastructures (European Open Science Cloud), Promotions/Rewards and the responsible use of Bibliometrics, and Citizen Science. It will take UCL (University College London) as an exemplar of good practice and demonstrate with real life examples how this university has implemented new platforms and services, established new policies and practice, showing the benefits and the challenges of these approaches.

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, National Library of Finland

Director, Library Network Services, National Library of Finland 2000–

Adviser of LIBER (2018–2020), President 2014–2018, vice-president 2010–2014

Member of DORA (The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) advisory committee

2018–2021

Member of the Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission 2016–2018, 2018–2020

Member of the Digital Heritage Expert Group, European Commission 2017-2021

Member of the Finnish Open Science strategy group 2017–2020

Member of the Finnish Publication Forum steering group 2020-2023

Member of the steering committee of the Research information hub - a new window into Finnish

research 2017–2020

Member of the steering committee of the Finnish Open Science and Research Initiative 2014–2017

Member of the National Digital Library steering committee 2010–2017

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen is the director of Library Network Services at the National Library of Finland (NLF). She is a director who leads the development of national infrastructure services for HE institutions, public libraries, archives, museums, and other public sector institutions.

The Library Network Services provides national infrastructure services for libraries, archives, museums and for the public sector as a whole. The services can be divided into two main categories:1) services that improve access to information and 2) metadata and bibliographic services as well as interoperability services.

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen is the director of two research infrastructures of the Finnish Research Infrastructure Roadmap (2014–2020), namely FinELib and Finna. She is the former President and adviser of LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries. Fostering Open Science is a priority of LIBER, which represents 400+ research libraries across 40 countries in Europe. LIBER has been actively fostering Open Science especially in the fields of Open Access, Research Data Management, FAIR Data, Digital Humanities, as well as leadership and skills development. Advocacy related to the copyright reform, raising awareness,  building strategic partnerships and being active in EU projects related to Open Science are also among the duties of LIBER.

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen has been a member of the Open Science Policy Platform of the European Commission. She is the only person representing libraries in the expert group. The OSPP consists of 25 high-level representatives of European Open Science stakeholders. The OSPP has published a final report in 2020.

She has been a member of steering committees of the Open Science and Research Initiative as well as the National Digital Library in Finland. The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture coordinated the Open Science and Research Initiative (ATT) for the term 2014–2017. The objective was for Finland to become one of the leading countries in Open Science and Research. The National Digital Library of Finland developed the availability and usability of digital cultural heritage; preservation of digital cultural heritage; digitisation of cultural heritage and collaboration between libraries, archives, and museums. The National Library of Finland is responsible for the development of the National Discovery Service Finna (finna.fi). Based on external evaluation, Finna has been the most successful of the NDL services.

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen is also a member of the Digital Heritage Expert Group and she has been a member of the Europeana board and the Europeana executive committee during 2010–2015. The mandate of the Digital Heritage Expert Group is to assist the Commission in relation to the implementation of existing EU legislation, programmes, and policies; to coordinate with the member states, exchange of views and give guidance on Europeana.

Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen has extensive national and international networks related to Open Science; open discovery and digital cultural heritage.

Presentation:

International and national collaboration of various stakeholders boosting Open Science

Open Science is implemented in many countries in Europe a recent example of this s the launch of the CoNOSC: Council for National Open Science Coordination. Research is global and the development of policies, infrastructures, sharing of best practices etc. must happen in international collaboration. Various platforms and organisations such as Open Science Policy Platform, Liber, LERU, OA2020 initiative and licensing consortia to mention a few- support the transition towards Open Science. Libraries have an important role in implementing open science practices. 

Finland aims to be a leading country in Open Science. The development of the basic building blocks started already in 2010 in a national initiative. In 2018 the responsibility of national coordination of Open Science was given to the Federation of Learned Societies in accordance with the recommendations of the Open Science Policy Platform. 

The presentation will discuss European and national level policies and the role of libraries in implementing open science practices. 

Emily Poznanski, De Gruyter

Emily Poznanski, Director Strategy & Insights at De Gruyter, has worked in open access publishing for

10 years. De Gruyter is an international, independent publisher headquartered in Berlin that has

published first-class scholarship for more than 260 years, which excels in the humanities.

From 2011 to 2016, she was Product Manager, Open Access Books at De Gruyter Open developing

what is now the largest independent source of open access books worldwide and earlier worked on

the launch of fully open access journals, and the transition of titles from subscription to OA.

In her current role, Emily continues to design and develop a company-wide transition to open access

that supports community appropriate solutions and the diversity of academic output.

Presentation:

Working towards open research in the humanities

Open research speeds up the collective development of scholarly communication by making research available to anyone with internet access, anywhere in the world. It fosters academic exchange by removing technical, financial and legal barriers. 

That said, as a predominantly humanities publisher, at De Gruyter we recognize that the transition to open access is not a uniform one and we’re working closely with our researchers, librarians and research organisations to make this journey together.

For subject areas where authors do not have funding to pay for APCs or BPCs, De Gruyter is working on other business models that distribute publications fees across different stakeholders. Our goal is to enable open access publishing for everyone.

Catriona MacCallum, Hindawi Limited

Catriona MacCallum is Director of Open Science at Hindawi Limited. She has 21 years experience in scholarly publishing, including 17 years in Open Access Publishing. She joined PLOS from Elsevier in 2003 to launch PLOS Biology as one of the Senior Editors, leaving as Advocacy Director in 2017. She is a member of the OASPA Board of Directors, the Advisory Board of the Royal Society (Publishing) and DRYAD. She is also on the steering committee of DORA. She is a founding individual of the I4OC (Initiative for Open Citations) campaign. In the past few years, she was also a member of the European Commission’s Open Science Policy Platform.

Presentation:

The transformative power of Open Science for the scholarly publishing industry 

‘Openness’ in science is not a goal for its own sake. Rather, openness is an instrument that, when used responsibly, can fuel a faster, more effective, more reliable, more trustworthy, more equitable and more innovative research communication system. This does not mean that openness is a panacea - there are limits to openness. But, as the COVID pandemic has shown, there is tangible evidence that open science can speed up our understanding of and response to public health emergencies. The benefits of Open Science applies not only to all disciplines but also to the scholarly publishing business itself.  This will entail a fundamental shift in how publishers view their role: from that one based on the ownership and control of research outputs, to one that focuses on the creation of tools, products and services that maximise effective and reliable research communication in a globally networked digital age.

Sofie Wennström, Stockholm University Library

Presentation: