The Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices (OPECST) adopted, during its meeting of Wednesday, March 9, 2022, a report “For a realistic, balanced and respectful of academic freedom open science”, presented by the deputy Pierre Henriet, the senator Laure Darcos and the senator Pierre Ouzoulias.
The OPECST, a joint information body of the National Assembly and the Senate, composed of eighteen deputies and eighteen senators, is responsible for ” informing Parliament of the consequences of scientific and technological choices in order to enlighten its decisions. It thus provides Parliament with the expertise it needs to make long-term political choices. Cédric Villani currently chairs this parliamentary delegation.
The report
At the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, the OPECST conducted a study on open science, which is a continuation of its previous report entitled ” Promoting and protecting a shared culture of scientific integrity” . This work showed that scientific integrity implied questioning the entire research environment, and in particular the scientific publication process, but also the methods of evaluation of researchers and their work.
The report first reminds us that the digital revolution is disrupting the dissemination of scientific productions that could previously only be found in specialized journals. In this context of powerful technological advances, the project of “open science “ promotes the ideal of a wide, immediate and free dissemination of publications but also, more recently, of research data. Numerous private and public initiatives have emerged since the 1990s and have made all research work and articles, past or present, accessible using a variety of tools: open archives, preprints, epirevues, dissemination platforms, public libraries, etc. International, European and national institutions, universities and our research institutes are accompanying these developments and are even driving certain changes.
These evolutions call for a reflection on the economic models of scientific publishing and the place of publishers, as well as on the question of the respect of pluralism, academic freedom and copyrights of which the researchers remain holders, leaving some legal uncertainties.
They reexamine our relationship with research evaluation, scientific integrity and the role of books, the blind spot of open science, which is nonetheless vital for the human and social sciences. It is urgent to understand the stakes and implications of open science in order to ensure that it allows a certain pluralism, which is essential for our culture and the vitality of democracy.
The eight proposals of the report
The redesign of this public policy will aim at pluralism and bibliodiversity because the opening of science must take several forms, the Diamond model (public funding of publications) being only one of them.
A series of eight proposals emerge from this work:
- To define and implement a balanced and concerted policy for open science and scientific publishing that supports small publishers in a truly interministerial approach, involving in particular the ministries responsible for higher education, research and culture;
- Facilitate dialogue between all stakeholders and reform the Observatory of Scientific Publishing by bringing it closer to the Mediator of the Book and the Committee for Open Science;
- Respect academic freedom, the independence of researchers, freedom of disclosure and copyright;
- Promote the path of pluralism through bibliodiversity rather than programming the future hegemony of the Diamond model;
- Better evaluate the effects of the open science policy and make any new measure conditional on thorough impact studies;
- Strengthen the role of Parliament in open science;
- Revise the evaluation methods for researchers, in favor of more qualitative criteria in order to reduce the pressure to publish;
- Provide training on open science issues for all research communities.
The report concludes that open science, to be effective, must be realistic
balanced and respectful of academic freedom. It raises political questions, notably concerning sovereignty over research results and data, but also economic and financial issues for public authorities and private publishers, which depend on the options chosen in terms of access to scientific publications.
In the future, the constitution of open scientific data will represent a historical referencing opportunity but also a risk, depending on the way our societies will regulate artificial intelligence technologies from an ethical point of view.
Translated from L’OPECST adopte un rapport « Pour une science ouverte réaliste, équilibrée et respectueuse de la liberté académique »
