About open science
Open science is an approach to the scientific process that ensures early and open sharing of research outputs, transparent and reproducible practices, inclusive collaboration across disciplines and sectors, and active engagement of society - including through citizen science and science communication.
The EU's open science policy
Open science is at the centre of European research policy. Policies, initiatives and structures are developed and implemented to open up European science and research to make them more efficient and productive, seamless, transparent and robust as well as responsive to societal needs and expectations.
The objective is to bring Europe to the best position to reap the benefits of open science by opening up the research system between scientists and between disciplines, as well as towards society as a whole. Open Science facilitates sharing and collaboration, thereby accelerating the discovery process, improving research quality, and making science more impactful and central to human and societal development.
This requires bringing down barriers, developing incentives, and enabling data-intensive science and massive knowledge sharing, as well as promoting a scientific approach in public debate. Embracing open science as the modus operandi of research requires improving the wide range of practices that comprise open science and developing the enablers for it.
Open science practices
Notable open science practices include:
- early and open sharing of research:
- pre-registration, registered reports, data deposition in shared repositories, pre-prints
- open collaboration within science and with other knowledge producers/users
- providing immediate and unrestricted open access to scientific publications, research data, models, algorithms, software, protocols, notebooks, workflows, and all other research outputs
- ensuring verifiability and reproducibility of research outputs
- practicing responsible research output management (publications, data, and other outputs) in line with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles
- promoting public engagement in research and innovation, bolstering citizen science and enhancing public trust in science
Open science enablers
Notable open science enablers include:
- Legislative and regulatory environment for practising open science:
- Investigating potential measures to ensure an EU copyright and data legislative and regulatory framework fit for research.
- Horizon Europe provisions on open science
- Open science infrastructures and skills:
- the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), recognised as one of the Common European Data Spaces, enhancing the EU’s leadership in the global data economy
- Open Research European, innovative open access publishing platform for research funded by all EU Programmes, supporting high-quality, transparent, and equitable open access scholarly publishing without author fees
- support for skills and education for equitably practicing Open Science and FAIR research data management
Open science policies in R&I are part of the European Research Area (ERA) policy agenda. They are implemented through actions and structural policies, backed with Horizon Europe funding actions, mainly under the INFRA and WIDERA parts of the Work Programme, and other activities such as Mutual Learning Exercises. More information on the ERA policy platform.
