Editorial: Towards Open Science

This may be the last edition of this newsletter with ‘open access’ in its name. We are moving towards the wider perspective of ‘open science’–of which open access to, and re-use of, research data is as much an integral part as open access to research publications.

In the Netherlands, a further step was taken with the presentation of the National Plan Open Science to the Dutch government on 9 February. The plan is the response of a broad coalition of academic stakeholders to an appeal from the government, a few weeks earlier. The plan is ambitious, moving the target of 100% open access to publications forward from 2024 to 2020, and giving both open data and new forms of research evaluation a solid place on the agenda. For this issue we discussed the National Plan with Kees Aarts, dean of the F aculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences and a strong advocate of open science. He admits that the plan is ambitious, but “in order to get things moving, high ambitions are essential”, Aarts says.

Since our last newsletter, new open access deals have been made, and others renewed, with more than a dozen academic journal publishers. At present, more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals are available for open access publishing under this scheme–at no cost for the author (the costs are ‘prepaid’ from the budgets of the university libraries). New publishers and journals will be added to the list, like the addition of another large batch of Elsevier journals early 2018. It will be difficult not to find a quality journal in your field in which to publish in open access. In this newsletter we present an overview; for support and advice, please do contact openaccess rug.nl.

How do early career researchers (ERC’s), taking their first steps in academic publishing, view open access? We interviewed Paul Plazier, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences. He considers open access a laudable and appealing but complicated phenomenon, and discusses some barriers he experiences.

Since the beginning of this year, the UG and UMCG follow an explicit ‘green’ open access policy. Researchers are required to deposit the full-text final author’s version of their peer-reviewed articles in the University’s research database. The new policy will not entail extra work on the part of the researcher; after depositing, most of the workflow will be handled by the Library.
Lastly, open access, open data, and open science are complex phenomena, and not just for ERC’s. To help medical researchers find their way, the UMCG organized a symposium ‘ResearchIT tools: which, how?’ We summarize the main topics and messages of the symposium.

Enjoy reading, and look out later this year for our first Open Science Newsletter!