Last week, IOI hosted our third Community Conversation from the State of Open Infrastructure Report. The topic of the discussion was Regional Policy Developments. The conversation was based on findings from the chapter on Regional Policy Developments and their implications for open infrastructure and the 2024 Survey of Recent Open Science Policy Developments.
IOI's Nicky Wako set the stage by providing an overview of IOI's work and the State of Open Infrastructure report. IOI's Emmy Tsang, Gail Steinhart and Jerry Sellanga, who authored the report, discussed the chapter's key findings, questions raised and recommendations.
Below are highlights from that conversation (tune in to the full recording below):
A recording of IOI's Community Conversation on regional open science policy developments
Increased number of open science policies across surveyed regions
Our evaluation of policies from the four continents shows a clear uptick in the number of open science policies and policies that mention or infer the use of open infrastructure. In Latin America and Africa, we have seen more countries over the past decade start to develop and implement open access and open data policies. In the US and Europe, the last decade has seen more governments, federal agencies, philanthropies, and research organizations adopting open science policies and embracing open science practices.
As open science policies continue to be developed in different nations, it is important that they are designed to enhance interoperability and cooperation across jurisdictions.
"As more open science policies are enacted in Africa, it is equally important to emphasize the need to harmonize policies. So, these policies need to be developed in a way that they are not working in isolation but rather foster that element of cooperation and interoperability then finally, we are also looking at increased research funding and investment as a big catalyst for the development of open science on the continent," said Jerry Sellanga, author of the African and Latin American sections of the report.
Implications for open infrastructure
The panel discussed the potential implications of these policies on the investment in and adoption of open infrastructure. In Europe, policies are beginning to explicitly mention open infrastructure. "In terms of understanding the context in Europe, we reviewed 56 national open science research and innovation and research infrastructure policies instruments from across 33 European countries. From this review, we noticed that many countries recognize the importance of infrastructure in advancing open science practices. And the instruments we have reviewed mentioned, for example, building national and institutional infrastructure to support open access and open research data," said Emmy Tsang, author of the European section of the report.
In the US, the Nelson Memo mandates public access to all research data from federally funded research, eliminates embargos, and strongly advocates for persistent identifiers on all research outputs. The Memo is expected to lead to a surge in the use of repository infrastructures, raising concerns over the sustainability of repositories, particularly those where revenue does not scale proportionally with usage. “Another question I have is whether underserved disciplines, particularly the humanities that are newly subject to these requirements but may lack in infrastructure, might start to see that gap in capacity exacerbated,” said Gail Steinhart, author of the US section.
Funding challenges and uncertainties
While the increased number of open science policies further supports the adoption of open science practices, sufficient funding is key to implementing the policy recommendations. Speakers noted recent research funding cuts in Latin America and Europe, which may impact the implementation of open science policies and the development and adoption of open infrastructure.
One example here is the Open Science NL budget cut, announced in September 2024. The Open Science Netherlands Work Programme 2024-2025 laid out provisions for multiple funding instruments for initiatives to advance open access, open research data, open research software, and citizen science, and includes a €17.5 million instrument to support the development of digital infrastructures that enable open science processes. The budget cut may cast uncertainty over the country’s future investment in open science and open infrastructure.
Indicators of policy success
The panel explored how success could be defined for open science policies and the complexities around defining such indicators. While metrics like the number of open access publications and repository deposites might seem like straightforward indicators of scucess, focussing solely on these output-based metrics could over look the broader cultural and societal impacts that these policies and open science aims to achieve, such as increased accessibility and use of research by diverse audiences, enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing across disciplines and regions, and more equitable participation in research. “Another aspect of access we haven’t talked about is the access to lay public, access to understandable research summaries, and the whole layer of additional work and creativity that could happen around research out of making it accessible beyond the research communities,” said Gail.
If you missed the State of Open Infrastructure: Regional Policy Development conversation or would like to rewatch it, you can find a recording on our YouTube channel. You can also read the 2024 Survey of Recent Open Science Policy Developments in full via this link.
Our next State of Open Infrastructure community conversation is at the Digital Library Federation's Virtual Forum next week on Tuesday, Oct 22, at 11 a.m. ET. In this conversation titled “Towards resilient open infrastructures: Celebrating and navigating organizational transitions”, leaders of open infrastructure services for research and scholarship — Caroline Edwards (Open Library of Humanities), Jennifer Gibson (Dryad), and Peter Suber (Open Access Tracking Project / TagTeam) — will discuss how they navigate organizational transitions and explore what “success”, “sustainability”, and “resilience” look like today for open infrastructures. Please register for that event via this link.