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Find out more about the philosophy and concepts behind the Open Science movement: from international organisation who engage in it, to inspiring universities policies and other relevant documents.

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General information

UNESCO recommendation on Open Science

The recommendation aims to promote the transition towards open science by encouraging member states to adopt open science policies and practices. Broadly, it sets guidelines to make scientific research results and data more widely accessible, more easily discoverable and reusable, and more inclusive, fostering more effective communication and collaboration among researchers, institutions, and sectors.

Center for Open Science

The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit organization that aims to increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. They work to promote best practices in science, such as preregistering studies and sharing data and code, in order to improve the reliability and trustworthiness of scientific findings. Some of the ways that COS does this is by developing and maintaining open-source tools for researchers, such as the Open Science Framework (OSF) and by educating scientists about the importance of open science practices.

Science Europe

Science Europe is an association of research funding and performing organizations from over 30 European countries. One of its goals is to promote open science and to make scientific research widely and easily accessible to the public. It does so by developing policies and guidelines for open access, research data management, and research integrity.


National Open Science policies

Swiss National ORD Strategy

This document states the position of Switzerland towards making research data openly available to the public, to promote the reuse and the dissemination of research data and to enhance the visibility of Swiss research.

Swiss National Open Access Strategy

This document outlines a combination of policies, financial incentives, and infrastructure support for researchers and institutions in the transition to full open access publishing in Switzerland


Other universities’ forward-thinking policies

Utrecht University

This institution has chosen to make the transition to Open Science in 2017. To do so, it has launched a forward thinking programme that aims to stimulate and facilitate researchers to put open science into practice. 

CERN

CERN released in 2022 a new policy for Open Science. The policy aims to make all CERN research fully accessible, inclusive, democratic and transparent, for both other researchers and wider society, by providing specific guidelines for its community.


Open access publishing

Plan S / cOAlition S

Coalition S is an international initiative of research funders committed to making full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. They aim to achieve this by requiring that scientific publications resulting from research they fund are made openly available immediately upon publication.


Reforming Research Assessment

DORA

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), is a set of principles and guidelines for evaluating scientific research. This initiative aims to promote more fair and accurate assessment of scientific research by moving away from traditional metrics like journal impact factors and instead considering the quality and impact of the research itself, as well as encouraging fair-play and unbiased evaluation for the researchers.

CoARA

CoARA, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, is an initiative that aims to promote fair, transparent, and inclusive research evaluation. It seeks to improve the way that research is assessed by advocating for the use of multiple metrics and reducing the emphasis on traditional metrics like journal impact factors.


Licensing information

Creative Commons and Open Science

This DCC guide will help you decide how to apply a licence to your research data, and which licence would be most suitable. It should provide you with an awareness of why licensing data is important, the impact licences have on future research, and the potential pitfalls to avoid.