From 14 – 16 November, OpenAIRE hosted the Open Science Forum, which brought together speakers from Luxembourg and across Europe to discuss various aspects of Open Science. Ahead of the Forum, CEOs and stakeholders also met to discuss a national plan for Open Science.
Making research more visible, transparent, efficient and reproducible, how to achieve this was at the core of the Luxembourg Open Science Forum, a three-day event of seminars, debates and workshops which took place in the newly-opened Luxembourg Learning Centre.
The Forum gathered 16 speakers from across Europe, who delivered 20 sessions, including nine talks, eight workshops and three debates.
Attendants learned about research data management, intellectual property rights and the new Plan S for Open Access developed by Science Europe and the European Commission; debated about the current and future of academic publishing, the research evaluation and gender issues in Open Science. Participants were introduced to Open Science tools and had the chance to create ORCID, get training on Zotero, AMNESIA and OpenKnowledgeMaps.
FNR Secretary General and Science Europe President Marc Schiltz gave a presentation about Plan-S – a joint initiative of major European research funders to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality by 2020.
The FNR is a convinced advocate of Open Access and was leading the adoption of the first National Policy on Open Access in 2015. Back in December 2016, it introduced its Open Access policy for publications from FNR co-funded research as well as a new instrument to help cover the article processing fees, the FNR Open Access Fund. Sean Sapcariu, Programme Manager at the FNR, also delivered a session at the Forum detailing the FNR’s policy and associated funding instrument.
All presentations and materials presented at the Open Science Forum, which was supported by the University of Luxembourg, the FNR and FOSTER, are available for download.
In addition to the various sessions, talks and debates, participants also had the opportunity to take part in the Open Science Quest, a parallel activity also held in the Luxembourg Learning Centre, which consisted of information points and challenges to learn about Open Science practices at your own pace.
A national plan for Open Science
Luxembourg’s research actors attach great importance to the impact of research outputs on science, industry, policy making and society in general. To maximise the possibilities for impact of research outputs, publicly-funded research should be as transparent, collaborative, reproducible and efficient as possible – and research outputs made publicly available.
Ahead of the Open Science Forum, a working group consisting of stakeholders including CEOs from Luxembourg research institutions, as well as researchers and representatives from OpenAIRE, gathered to discuss a Luxembourg National Plan for Open Science. The aim of this working group is to define a Luxembourg-wide plan for open access to science, with the goal to implement a plan by 2020.
At the meeting, the stakeholders agreed that five principles – ranging from publishing in open access journals, making data openly available, developing infrastructure, as well as making adjustments to how researchers and proposals are evaluated which reflect open science practices – must be at the heart of an open science plan for Luxembourg.
