The Open Science movement has the potential to create opportunities to also reform scholarly assessment practices to acknowledge and reward publication in Open Access journals, data sharing, and a broader range of research outputs. The European University Association (EUA) conducted a survey from October 2020 to January 2021 of the level of development of Open Science in European universities. The report on the survey outlines responses from 272 institutions from 36 European countries. The purpose of the survey was to focus on gauging the development and implementation of Open Science practices in European universities, and to provide evidence-based recommendations based on the results of the survey.
The survey addressed established (Open Access, research data) and emerging (e.g. citizen science, open education) fields of Open Science. Key results and recommendations from the survey include:
Key Results
- Open Access to research publications was considered to be highly important for 90% of institutions, but only 60% considered its implementation level to be high. However, the gap between importance and implementation is much wider in data-related areas (RDM, FAIR and data sharing): high importance at between 55-70% of the institutions surveyed, with high levels of implementation at 15-25%.
- Fifty-four percent of institutions have an Open Science policy and 37% are developing one. Only 9% of surveyed institutions lack an Open Science policy or are not planning to draft one.
- Eighty percent of institutions monitored the number of publications in their repository and 70% monitored articles published by their researchers in Open Access journals.
- Ninety percent of the institutions surveyed have their own repository, participate in a shared repository or both.
Recommendations:
- Create the conditions to mainstream Open Science.
- Continue to invest in embedding Open Science in institutional policies and practices.
- Fully integrate Open Science in reward and incentive practices.
Morais R, Saenen B, Garbuglia F, Berghmans S, Gaillard V (2021). From principles to practices: Open Science at Europe’s universities 2020-2021 EUA Open Science Survey results.https://www.eua.eu/resources/publications/976:from-principles-to-practices-open-science-at-europe%E2%80%99s-universities-2020-2021-eua-open-science-survey-results.html?utm_source=social&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_name=Twitter-social-1-07-2021