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Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director at F1000 Research, has been a member of the High-Level Advisory Group for the European Commission’s Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP), chairing their work on next-generation indicators and their integrated advice, and Editor and Coordinator of their final report, which has just been published. In this blog, she discusses her view on this final report, which provides an update on progress towards Open Research across Europe and then proposes a vision for moving beyond Open Research to create a shared research knowledge system by 2030.

Over the past few years, there have been huge strides towards Open Research (intended to include here Open Science and Open Scholarship) across the globe. The 2016 Amsterdam Call for Open Science led the way for a plethora of initiatives across Europe to reimagine how research is conducted and disseminated, and how researchers and their institutions are rewarded and incentivized.

However, despitethe international scientific community embracing Open Research practices more than ever, progress has been slower than anticipated and there remain real obstacles to overcome.

The purpose of the OSPP over the past four years has been to help driveforward the systemic change needed to make Open Research a reality in Europe, not only at the EC and policy level, but also among the key actors and communities that members of the OSPP represent and across all Member States in Europe.

The OSPP final report amalgamates the work achieved by the OSPP during its four-year tenure, reviewing progress over the past two years since our combined recommendations across the EC’s eight ambitions on Open Research (OSPP-REC) and then proposing a vision for a shared research knowledge system by 2030.

Progress across Europe

In many ways, there is much to celebrate in terms of progress on Open Research over the past two years since the publication of the recommendations we presented for each of the key actors in the scholarly ecosystem across Europe. There are examples for each of these eight ambitions (Rewards and Incentives; Indicators & Next-Generation Metrics; Future of Scholarly Communications, European Open Science Cloud (EOSC); FAIR Data, Research Integrity; Skills and Education; Citizen Science) where some sections of the communities are making progress and are planning and/or implementing real change.

We recognise that progress in each area requires significant change as part of an interconnected and complex research system, and is going to take some time. Nevertheless, there has been rapid progress in a number of areas (see the summary cards on pages 12-13 of the report) perhaps most notably in Scholarly Communication, EOSC and FAIR Data.  In other areas, such as Research Integrity, Skills & Education, and Citizen Science, there is however a more mixed view on how much real progress has been made, with those parts of the scholarly ecosystem tasked with making the most substantial adjustments feeling that significant progress has been made, whereas others who are perhaps more the beneficiaries of change not recognising the same level of advancement.

This difference seems to reflect either a difference in view of what progress looks like and what we are trying to achieve, or inadequate communication and engagement around the steps forward and what has been achieved. It is important to reconcile such differences to avoid undermining any real benefits and to avoid polarisation between key actors within the scholarly ecosystem, which will damage our ability to move further forward and continue this progress.

Building a registry of good practice

The main focus of the past two years of the OSPP has been on Rewards, Incentives, and Next-Generation Metrics, due to their pivotal role in enabling Open Research. The 2019 Paul Wouters et al report on Indicator Frameworks for Fostering Open Knowledge Practices in Science and Scholarship, drew upon established analyses of research-related metrics such as the Leiden Manifesto and The Metric Tide and collated a vast array of indicators that can be used to support research and researcher evaluation in different situations and different contexts. As the OSPP, our focus was to consider what indicators could be used to both measure and responsibly incentivise researchers to engage in Open Research practices and behaviours. 

We do know that there are many examples of what looks like good and innovative practice across Member States and internationally. However, it can be hard to discover and find out the details of what is being tested, and there is no systematic way to assess what works and what is less helpful in driving Open Research practices and/or whether some may generate unintended consequences.

To this end, the OSPP has proposed a registry of pilots and implementations of responsible metrics to support Open Research. This registry would be structured (like clinicaltrials.gov) to enable searchability, and would include an initial entry detailing the pilot or proposed implementation of the relevant metrics, with a commitment to follow up (maybe a year or two later) with an update to the entry providing an analysis of what worked and what didn’t, and what can be learned.  

I am so pleased that the Research Data Alliance (RDA) has agreed to coordinate the creation of this registry, which ensures it remains neutral, internationally oriented, and driven as a bottom-up initiative. Once the registry has been created, it will be crucial to have a widespread call for contributions, ideally at the level of each Member State, and possibly coordinated by the new Council for National Open Science Coordination in Europe, to provide adequate incentives and drive to ensure uptake and contribution.

Moving beyond Open Research

Openness in research is crucial to building an effective, trustworthy, more collaborative and more equitable research system. These elements are crucial not only in responding effectively in emergency situations (like during the current global Coronavirus pandemic), but also to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and indeed to improving progress in research across every discipline.  It is important that Open Research is not seen as an end in itself and that we do not lose sight of the bigger aim. As stated in our report: While a focus on Open Science as a mechanism must be emphasised in any transition, Open Science must ultimately be embedded as part of a larger more systemic effort to foster all practices and processes that enable the creation, contribution, discovery and reuse of research knowledge more reliably, effectively and equitably.

Our report therefore concludes with a call on all European Member States and other relevant actors from the public and private sectors to help co-create, develop and maintain a ‘Research System based on shared knowledge’ by 2030.  Whilst this requires a lot of further fleshing out, and indeed some elements of this have also been identified by others, we outline five attributes which we believe are crucial to building such a system.

1. An academic career structure that rewards a broad range of outputs, practices and behaviours to maximise contributions to a shared research knowledge system. As detailed in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), this includes not only positively rewarding a much broader range of outputs, activities and contributions to the scholarly system, but also not stigmatising researchers for failure or for sharing negative/null/inconclusive results.
2. A research system that produces and shares research findings in ways that are reliable, transparent and trustworthy. Reliability and integrity of new research findings is crucial to speed up advancement of knowledge, but many surveys have shown a lack of awareness, support, training and leadership around research and publication ethics. This view was further backed up by many of the OSPP actors who felt that there is still significant progress to be made here.
3. A research system that enables innovation. Crucial to progress are processes that promote the rapid sharing of research knowledge, and maximise the potential for use and reuse, discoverability. This includes:
   1. Clear relevant policies that aim to increase the availability and reuse of research knowledge and technology in a global competitive context;
   1. A global interoperable infrastructure of tools, services, hardware and software;
   1. Clear regulatory frameworks to manage each stakeholder’s interests for the collective good;
   1. A transparent competitive market;
   1. A shared research system based on reciprocity.
4. A research culture that facilitates diversity and equity of opportunity. It is crucial that we develop a research knowledge system that enables all researchers and other relevant actors to not only access and reuse the knowledge but also to be able to contribute to that knowledge.  The research culture also needs to be such that it promotes experimentation, sharing, trust and collaboration, as well as individual creativity.
5. A research system that is built on evidence-based policy and practice. As we look to improve the research system, it is important that we do so on the basis of evidence. It is crucial that we assess existing, and perhaps entrenched practices, and recognise how, where and when new ways of working would be beneficial, as well as fully understand the likely consequences of any planned changes. A coordinated strategy for funding and delivering a programme of ‘research on research’ is therefore essential to enable this.

Importance of continuing pan-stakeholder discussions

The OSPP has provided what I believe is a truly unique forum to bring together representatives from across the scholarly ecosystem to discuss how to deliver Open Research. The group has spanned research performing organisations of all flavours (including academic and corporate), to research funders, scholarly societies and academies, research libraries, a broad spectrum of scholarly publishers, the major research- and e-infrastructures, and citizen science organisations.

Whilst we generally all agreed on the overall aim and trajectory, of course what was sometimes more challenging was finding the route to follow. However, given the scholarly ecosystem is so interconnected and complex, to move forward necessarily requires shared perspectives and a will to collaborate, and such collaboration I believe has been crucial to delivering the progress we have achieved to-date.

While the term of the OSPP has now come to an end, I hope that the model of building a truly cross-sector working group – with a remit to change things – can be followed and replicated to continue the charge to building a more open, collaborative and shared research system for the benefit of us all.