Perspectives on the future of Open Science

Open science proposes a fundamental systemic change in the way research is conducted, shared and evaluated. Through increasing the availability and accessibility of research results and involving societal actors in the research process, the open science movement aims to make the research process more efficient, transparent and responsive to global societal challenges. 

The European Commission has long been a front-runner in adopting open science as a policy target. However, its opportunities to take open science further and the consequences of doing so depend on the behaviour of other countries. After all, science is an international enterprise and realising open science requires changing many internationally accepted scientific practices and routines.

An uneven adoption of open science practices across the world involves serious risks, such as limitations to the career opportunities of researchers, high costs of open science implementation and free riding behaviour by countries profiting from the increased access to research without reciprocating that openness. Against this background, this foresight study considers how different levels and means of open science policy implementation in the two countries with the highest R&D investments (the United States and China) could affect the European opportunities to realise open science and the consequences for the European science system. The study looks at three dimensions of open science: open access, open data and open collaboration. It starts with a literature review of the most important drivers and barriers to open science and current developments in the three regions under scrutiny (US, China and the European Union) that enable open science. It then looks to the future and postulates four different scenarios for 2030 to explore the future realisation of open science under different geographical circumstances. 

Drivers and barriers

For this study, we looked at 11 drivers of and 8 barriers to open science practices as identified by the European Commission for the purpose of this study. We have clustered these drivers, presented on page 12 of the report, in three groups. Each cluster represents different mechanisms of stimulating open science practices:

• creating awareness and providing information on the opportunities and advantages of open science;
• incentives and disincentives for researchers;
• developing the necessary framework conditions: infrastructures, policies and skills development.

We review the relevance and importance of these clusters for each aspect of open science and then explore differences in the extent to which open science policies have been developed in China, the US and the European Union.

Open access
More and more research funders require open access publication of results. The diversity of available publication routes and the variety of funders’ and publishers’ open access policies create legal and practical uncertainties, though. More awareness is needed both of the technical aspects and of the benefits of publishing this way. Researchers generally regard open access as a positive phenomenon. However, researchers experience several barriers on their way to open access publishing, in addition to legal uncertainties and complex regulations. Traditional recognition and reward systems in science still consider publishing in high-impact journals of great importance. Many research councils now remove financial disincentives by providing coverage of article processing charges. Several kinds of infrastructures have been developed for the different routes to open access publishing, including: online platforms of open access journals and publishers and large institutional and subject repositories. Furthermore platforms have been developed that support publication and provide peer review processes – often open peer review processes. 

Open data
There is still a lack of awareness among many researchers on the possibilities and benefits of open data. It can be expected that current initiatives and requirements by funders, journals and academic organisations will contribute to the necessary awareness. There is increasing evidence that sharing research data is not only beneficial for society and the economy, but also for researchers themselves. This may further stimulate open data. Journals and research funders are the main actors who (can) provide incentives for open data. Simultaneously, they constitute the key building blocks of the current reward system of science that discourages researchers to openly share research data. One universal barrier for open data is that it simply takes time for authors, editors, peer reviewers and editorial support staff to enable it. Other barriers to open data are field-specific. For instance, concerns about being outcompeted, about misuse of data and with regard to privacy issues. The development of open data can be strongly driven by the integration of open science in infrastructures and assistance with tools and services. The adaptation of university curricula, education and training are needed to overcome the lack of skills. 

Open collaboration
There is evidence that open collaboration generates career benefits for academic researchers. However, many researchers hesitate to engage in open collaboration. More evidence of the benefits of open collaboration for researchers could make a big difference. An increasing awareness of the benefits of open collaboration will also encourage both policy-makers and research funders to further stimulate and reward open collaboration. The experiences with open collaboration vary strongly across disciplines. Researchers experience a particularly strong barrier to collaborate with industry, because industry often poses restrictions on the way researchers can communicate and share research results. Conditions and criteria formulated by research councils and other funding organisations can strongly influence open collaboration, as the European Framework Programmes demonstrate. Due to the complications of working with the non-academic partners discussed above, a lack of skills can be a barrier to open collaboration, in particular when working with public actors or citizens that are unfamiliar with scientific routines. This can be overcome by training researchers in communication and collaboration skills and the adaptation of university.

China
The impressive growth of Chinese R&D capacity over the past decades has come with public policies that stimulate university-industry collaboration. These have resulted in a high share of private funding. The Chinese government has implemented open access policies but China is still lagging slightly behind the US and the European Union. It is expected that open access offers a way to serve China’s domestic needs while maintaining international visibility. While open access through repositories (‘green route’) has been mandated, Chinese researchers seem to have a preference for open access publications via the gold route (in open access journals). Open data policies are heavily centralised: all scientific data generated in China must be submitted to government-sanctioned data centres before appearing in publications. There are indications that China may change its evaluation policies to rely less on bibliometric indicators, which may further stimulate open science.

United States
Many initiatives to promote open access and open data have originated in the United States. Since 2013, the US federal government requires public online availability of results of publicly funded research within 12 months of publication in a journal. Since 2017, all federal agencies have plans to increase public access to scholarly publications and digital data. A relatively high share of open access articles from the US is solely available through an institutional or subject repository (green route). Institutional mandates play a much larger role in the US than in China. The country has by far the largest number of data repositories. In the area of open collaboration, there are some initiatives to stimulate collaboration with a variety of stakeholders. The number of collaborative initiatives between higher education institutes and private parties in the US is comparable to the averages of the OECD and EU27.

European Union
The European Commission’s open science policy addresses the openness of research data and results. Furthermore, it entails the development of both physical and social structures that will enable researchers to comply with open science requirements. In open access, the European Union is on par with the US. Hybrid open access plays a larger role in Europe than in the US and China, suggesting a bigger role for read & publish deals. Two central pieces of infrastructure that have been developed are Open Research Europe (for publications) and the European Open Science Cloud (for research data). The R&D Framework programmes have long fostered collaboration between research, business and government sectors and have (more recently) promoted citizen science. Compared to China and the United States, the European Union focuses more on sharing intermediate research results, enabling reuse of data, and recognising and rewarding open science practices.

Four scenarios and possible European policy responses

Two factors that may influence the development of open science practices in China, the US and the European Union are the degree of geopolitical tension and the dominant interaction and coordination mechanisms in society. Therefore, we may expect that the extent to which coordination mechanisms in science and broader society are oriented towards solving societal challenges influences the opportunities for open science practices as well. We will draft four scenarios on the possible future development of open science practices in China and the US by combining these two influential factors. Each scenario is named after the strategic aim of the science policy in this particular scenario: Defence, Growth, Missions and Prosperity.

Defence
In this scenario, the geopolitical tension between the US, Europe and China is high and competition is the principal mechanism of interaction and coordination in society. Publicly funded science will primarily serve business interests. Competition between universities remains fierce. This is not a climate conducive to open access, open data and open collaboration. Traditional publishers and their journals remain important players in the US and limit open access opportunities by demanding high fees and imposing long embargo periods. Large academic publishers and big tech companies provide services to store, curate and document data – but they do so at high prices. China continues to focus on its own knowledge needs, hidden from view behind visa requirements and internet controls. Consequently, Chinese publications and data become less accessible to Europe.

Neither China nor the US invest in policies to implement open science, because the costs are high. Incentives to protect national security interests and to demonstrate one’s own scientific excellence prevail. Open science remains a movement pushed by members of the academic community, leading to scattered initiatives such as alternative publication platforms. This will not lead to large changes in publication and collaboration practices. 

In this scenario, Europe has the choice to either massively step up its efforts and investments in its own publishing and data sharing – to keep up with the private services developed mainly in the US – or compromise on open access and open data. Continuing with current open access and open data ambitions means that European science will be progressively disadvantaged due to the high costs and lack of reciprocity in access. However, continuing on its path may benefit the quality of European science, as more feedback is received. To counterweigh the US and China and work on open science in this scenario, EU member states could be stimulated to join forces and reinforce EU cooperation in science, particularly in the areas of defence and business interests. Such strong European cooperation could also lower the costs of open access and open data. 

Growth
In this scenario the geopolitical situation is harmonious, but competition remains the principal interaction and coordination mechanism in science and society. China is gradually integrated in the global science system with common organisational principles.
 
Academic publishers maintain their grip on the publication and distribution of research papers and invest in the development of data services. Consequently, gold or hybrid open access publishing are utilised most. Moreover, businesses develop and provide data services. However, governments and research funders push to decrease the costs of these open access and data services. 

There is progress on open science in China and the US, but this is generated bottom-up and only as far as it can be organised together with business and business interests. Both governments, research funders and actors within the academic community invest primarily in creating awareness about open science practices. Due to the predominance of business interests and competition in science, no real progress is made on incentivising researchers to practice open science or creating worldwide, integrated infrastructures for the sharing of data and publications. Consequently, open science remains focused on cooperation with business. It is therefore mainly about access to scientific articles and data from the medical, technical and natural sciences.
 
With economic growth as its overriding policy goal, open science in Europe will most likely be geared to opening up science to business interests. Sharing research results and data intensively with these stakeholders will help Europe to create a competitive advantage. However, competitive interests form a strong barrier to dispersing research results in the public domain. Competition fosters creativity and invention, but hampers openness. The risk of a brain drain from Europe is high in this scenario. This is due to the fact that competition drives up the amounts of funding needed to retain top-class researchers in the competition with the US and China. 

Missions
In this world of high geopolitical tension, governments increasingly seize the initiative to address a number of pressing issues and grand societal challenges. Coordination rather than competition becomes the dominant organisational paradigm. As part of mission-oriented science and innovation policies, a transition to open science is pursued to speed up research and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public research spending. However, this pursuit is obstructed by a lack of internationally shared standards and frameworks.

Strides towards open access, open data and open collaboration are made that remain within three separate regional blocks. Collaboration takes place primarily within regional borders and infrastructure for sharing data and publications is developed on a regional level. It is likely that strong links between European and American repositories and research data platforms remain, while China draws the short end of the bargain. Progress on open science is likely concentrated in relatively harmless fields, as both the US and China guard against the spilling over of sensitive knowledge. Because the research community is very active and influential, supported by governments and funders, diamond open access soars in this scenario. This means that the role of publisher-owned (traditional and gold) journals diminishes. Open data services are developed within the public sphere. While collaboration is predominantly local, there is a significant rise in citizen engagement, primarily in the US.
 
In this scenario, European governments will try to balance openness with restraint, for fear of giving too much knowledge and technologies away and being dominated – economically and politically – by China. Nevertheless, the resolve to invest in joint programming and research collaboration is high and science gets a massive boost. Substantial public investments in open science infrastructures for the curation and exchange of publications and data and other research intermediaries help to speed up research processes. In addition, they help to monitor and certify their quality and integrity. As different regions may apply different solutions for data and publication sharing, it is important that Europe implements good mechanisms for scientific quality control. 

Prosperity
This policy environment, with low geopolitical tension and a focus on solving global societal challenges, is optimal for the development of open science. All drivers stimulate open science to flourish.
 
Governments and research funders who demand open access publishing have become a worldwide standard. Open access diversifies – from scientific papers to books and other forms of output in various languages. Digital platforms managed by the research community have become central in improving accessibility to both publications and data. These infrastructures that enable the sharing of data and publications are increasingly interoperable. In addition, publication processes and rules are growing uniform. Frequent and intensive collaboration with non-academic partners has become a self-evident part of work for most academic researchers. Especially in the US, citizen science has become mainstream.
 
While Europe profits from the radically open research climate that makes its research more productive, efficient and of a higher quality, it is vulnerable to losing its research capacity to China and the US. To remain attractive to researchers in this scenario, Europe must develop a distinctive profile. This implies maintaining close connections to global networks, fostering absorptive capacities (through open science practices and researcher mobility) and developing key competencies in areas of strategic importance. Open science policies that stimulate open collaboration can help to nurture a sustainable specialised ecosystem in Europe. As in the previous scenario, Europe profits from an increase in feedback on scientific results, which makes science more productive and of better quality. 

General policy recommendations

Because the costs and benefits of an open science policy differ across the four scenarios, we cannot advice on a single robust policy strategy that is preferable in each scenario. We conclude this report with a couple of policy directions that are bound to be productive in most of the scenarios:

• Creation of a distinctive profile of European science, based on European values.
• Coordination of investments in data standardisation and data curation capacity.
• Investment in quality control, to ascertain the quality of data or research findings from other regions.
• Further development and promotion of new ways to incentivise and reward researchers to contribute to open science.
• Stimulation of open collaboration with a diversity of non-scientific partners, both private and public.

As a closing remark, we advise to look beyond the two countries addressed in the current study, and consider the value of cooperation with the global south in the further development of Europe’s open science strategy.