Open Access: from breakthroughs to going global

The Covid-19 crisis led to major push towards Open Access which is now well on its way to becoming a global reality. EUA Board member Patrick Lévy looks at this key moment in the movement’s history.

This year’s Open Access Week is a very special occasion. 2020 has shown – for all the good and bad reasons during a global pandemic that continues to affect us all – the power of Open Access. But while the unprecedented growth of Open Access papers and preprints has been a crisis mode reaction it is now time to make Open Access a permanent feature of the research system. Twenty years after the Budapest Open Access Initiative we are in a crucial moment: 2021 has all it needs for Open Access to become the norm for researchers in Europe.

First and foremost Horizon Europe will require immediate and irrevocable Open Access to publications resulting from research projects funded by the programme alongside a set of other elements mainstreaming Open Science. According to the European Commission costs for hybrid publishing will no longer be eligible and researchers will retain the rights to share their results. In parallel the Open Research Europe publishing platform is a prime example of a research funder supporting a publishing ecosystem that is innovative equitable and open. EUA as a supporter of sustainable and open scholarly publishing welcomes these changes in Horizon Europe. Of course this does not mean that the work is over. Horizon Europe will have to step up its backing of universities in managing this transition and enable them to support all the scientific communities to reach this objective.

Furthermore the long-awaited and at times hotly-debated “Plan S” will finally come into action on 1 January 2021. While the plan itself and its conditions have evolved – also due to constructive input from universities and other stakeholders – its core is as relevant as it was at its launch in September 2018. Open licences sustainable business models and copyright retention must be ensured. A welcome development has been the more strident work on rights retention to ensure Green Open Access and the growing attention to non-commercial publishing venues –  Diamond Open Access – in the quest to create a publishing system that is less dependent on a few commercial publishers and more diverse community-driven and scholar-led. Plan S is a crucial piece in a transition to Open Access driven by stakeholders in the academic community and we at EUA look forward to continuing our engagement with Coalition S in the coming year.

Likewise at the core of the transition to Open Science is a re-thinking of the ways in which we assess researchers and academic careers. EUA has been at the forefront of discussions on career assessment reforms and will continue this work. Based this we in a partnership with DORA and SPARC Europe will soon release materials and case studies that will support and inspire universities in reforming their internal assessment mechanisms and requirements.

Finally we need to look beyond Europe. Science scholarly publishing and the means of assessment are issues with global implications. There are understandable and legitimate concerns about Europe moving ahead without due considerations on what it means for others – an often-heard concern is pay-to-publish business models as hurdles for countries with lower incomes or disciplines not supported by external funding agencies. This is why we need a diverse and equitable publishing landscape. EUA supports such a vision of an open and inclusive system for the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science which is scheduled to be adopted in late 2021. This UNESCO recommendation already appearing very promising in its draft version has the potential to enshrine a global commitment to sustainable Open Access – and will hopefully make 2021 the year that Open Access and Open Science go global.