Introduction

The third week is devoted to the Open Science and Open Innovation Policy of the European Union. For the European Commission, Open Science is considered as the “organizing principle” of the European Research Area, and can be seen as one of the central components of their whole research policy.

The EU has ambitious goals connected to Open Science, some of which will have a major effect on “the rules of the game”. And being one of the big players in the scientific world, it is likely that the EU’s activities and projects will also have an effect on our daily lives as scientists. It is therefore a good idea to know a little more of the EU’s Open Science Policy and the plans and projects derived from it.

This chapter is organized as follows: The first video makes a start by simply outlining the Open Science Policy itself, explaining at the end of the video, how these ideas are actually put into action.

The second and third video explain the motivation behind this policy. We will learn about the reproducibility crisis and why openness within the research cycle leads to a higher connectivity in all research processes.

The fourth video then concentrates on the collaborative nature of Open Science, answering the question why new actors within the research process can lead to better science. “Not only can science speak to society, as it has done over the past two centuries, but society can now ‘speak back’ to science.” (Gibbons, 1999) It is at this point, that it should become clear that Open Science really sets a new paradigm, intergrating into the scientific enterprise practices for reproducibility, transparency, sharing and collaboration. And this also includes fundamental changes in the relationship between science and society, which is an implicit aspect of collaboration.

The fifth video then reflects on the relationship between Open Science and Open Innovation and what the European Union expects from the interplay of these concepts. Finally, the last two videos are designed to introduce one of the hot topics of the European modern research policy.

The EU is about to work out a completely new research assessment system (video 7), thereby promoting Open Science practices and leaving behind the rather simplistic rules of the Publish-or-Perish culture (video 6).

Please find the slides to the videos of this week in the download section below.