No science in this document. Not sure it’s a must read but those of you willing to have an idea of what’s happening at a European level from a legal/politics perspective may want to have a look
Sparc Europe just released an analysis of the open science policies in Europe. It says (p. 16):
The French approach is, together with Lithuania, the most high level of all […]. The French law is unlike most of the other policies in that it focuses on rights, rather than obligations, such as the right to access research data and the right to deposit publications in an Open Access repository. In practical terms, it seems obvious to say that implementation and monitoring will not be the duty of the French parliament but rather devolved to individual research organisations and publishers. […]
Then it mentions the ambition of the National Plan for Open Science
- Generalising Open Access to Publications
- Structuring Research Data and Making it Available through Open Access
- Be part of a sustainable European and international open science dynamic
[…] The plan also states that Data Management Plans will be generalized
One may also read the conclusion on p. 33 which contrasts the different countries:
By definition, all of the policies address research data. Eight address software, code, tools or models. Five address methods, workflows or protocols, and one addresses physical (non-digital) samples. The split between countries with policies which address open research data issues in isolation is (8), and those which deal with data under a broader umbrella such as“Open Science” or “Open Access” (10). […]
Six of the national approaches can be considered ‘soft’, in that they are explicitly
recommendations, and do not mandate compliance. Of the remainder, i.e. those that can be considered ‘hard’ policies, seven make reference to monitoring compliance, or raise the question of sanctions for non-compliance. This is perhaps unsurprising given the youth of many of the policies, the development of which tends to follow a pattern such as: Encourage > Expect > Require > Mandate. It is also encouraging to see a couple of national policies (DE, FR and NE) which not only address the potential of penalties for non-compliance, but also reward and recognition for work well done.
It’s good to see mentalities evolve but I think reproducible research is still very hard to achieve in practice and requires to develop skills and training. So let’s work! 