the netherlands’ plan on open science · research (nwo) and the netherlands organisation for...

Tung Tung Chan, Ingeborg Meijer October – 2018

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The Netherlands’ Plan on Open Science

Open Science Monitor Case Study

The Netherlands’ Plan on Open Science - Open Science Monitor Case Study

European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Directorate A — Policy Development and Coordination Unit A.2 — Open Data Policy and Science Cloud E-mail [email protected]@ec.europa.eu [email protected] European Commission B-1049 Brussels

Manuscript completed in July 2018.

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Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2018

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EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The Netherlands’ Plan on Open Science

Open Science Monitor Case Study

2018 Directorate-General for Research and Innovation EN

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Table of Contents 1 Background ........................................................................................................... 4 2 Drivers ................................................................................................................. 4 3 Barriers................................................................................................................. 5

3.1 100% open access in 2020 5 3.2 Making research data optimally suitable for reuse 7 3.3 Corresponding evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers 8

4 Impact .................................................................................................................. 9 5 Lessons learnt ........................................................................................................ 11 6 Policy conclusions ................................................................................................... 12 References................................................................................................................. 13

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Disclaimer: The information and views set out in this study report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the Commission. The Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this case study. Neither the Commission nor any person acting on the Commission’s behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The case study part of Open Science Monitor led by the Lisbon Council together with CWTS, ESADE and Elsevier.

Authors

Tung Tung Chan – CWTS

Ingeborg Meijer – CWTS

STUDY ON OPEN SCIENCE: MONITORING TRENDS AND DRIVERS (Reference: PP-05622-2017)

1 Background

The Netherlands’ Presidency of the EU in the first half of 2016 was instrumental to the development of the open science action plan, which aimed at making all scientific research funded with public money publicly available as of 2020. The National Plan Open Science (NPOS) was presented and launched (www.openscience.nl) on 9 February 2017, to ensure that the Netherlands progresses towards achieving its ambitions and actions, as a follow-up response to the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science published in April 2016. The NPOS classified the ambitions into three key areas for open science: (1) 100% open access to publications, (2) making research data optimally suitable for reuse and (3) corresponding evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers.

The NPOS adopted a multi-actor approach and involved the following coalition of parties for a joint and coordinated implementation towards open science:

• Scientists and researchers: Dutch universities, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), The Young Academy, the PhD Candidates Network of the Netherlands (PNN) and PostdocNL.

• Educational, research institutions and libraries: Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), The Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (VH), the Royal Library (KB), Dutch consortium of university libraries and the National Library of the Netherlands (UKB), and the College of Directors University Computing Centres (CvDUR).

• Government policy and funding institutions: Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Ministry of Economic Affairs, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw).

• Supporting organizations and platforms in science: Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), The Netherlands eScience Centre, Dutch Tech Centre for Life Sciences (DTL), 4TU. Centre for Research Data, Collaborative organisation for ICT in Dutch education and research (SURF), National Coordination Point Research Data Management (LCRDM), The Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU Data4lifesciences) and The Dutch Infrastructure for Personalized Medicine and Health Research (Health-RI).

2 Drivers

NPOS serves to improve accessibility and the impact and social relevance of scientific research. The underlying principle is that the entire society should benefit from publicly funded research and that knowledge should be shared as quickly, widely, and effectively as possible. Access to the most recent scientific knowledge for potential contributors, including new or unknown users helps us to bring solutions closer. However, only those who are affiliated to governmental, educational and research institutions, companies and SMEs have access to the latest scientific knowledge. Through open science, users beyond the scientific community can influence the world of research with questions and ideas and help to gather and validate research data. Increased accessibility will encourage application of knowledge and the development of innovative products and services. Through open science, interests of various groups at all levels of society in an area which many people consider to be important may be represented and reflected in scientific knowledge production and processes. The scientific, industrial and societal driver of the NPOS can be briefly summarised as follows:

• For science, open science improves transparency, verifiability, efficiency, reproducibility, and sustainability of research processes and, therefore, accelerates the development of knowledge.


• For industry, open science increases innovative capacity as individuals benefit more readily from publicly available information and use it in combination with their own knowledge and experiences, to develop novel products and processes.

• For society, everyone outside the scientific community may benefit from open science because they can readily access and use scientific information.

3 Barriers

3.1 100% open access in 2020

The first ambition requires all Dutch universities to flesh out how they will make open access publications part of the evaluation system in the intervening years. Most of society will have limited access to scientific information until the ambition of full open access to publications in the Netherlands is achieved. Government and political bodies, specifically the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, plays a crucial role in broadening the national administrative support base – to support all the parties involved (see section 1), and to ensure the commitment and cooperation on the joint development of open access policy and implementation. The first national meeting on open science for researchers took place on 29 May 2017 at Delft University of Technology. The meeting report states that support for open access publishing should be an integral part of funding and fully integrated to the research cycle. Table 1 presents an overview of open access deals with publishers.

Publisher Deal duration

Conditions

American Chemical Society (ACS)

2017-2021 All new articles submitted by an author connected to a Dutch university will be published open access without extra charges.

Brill 2017-2018 All new articles submitted by an author connected to a Dutch university will be published open access without extra charges. University of Maastricht has a different agreement.

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

2017-2019 From 1 June 2017, corresponding authors at Dutch universities will be able to publish in open access in 339 CUP hybrid journals and 17 CUP full open access journals, without any additional costs.

Elsevier 2016-2018 All accepted articles by corresponding authors of Dutch universities in the selected 396 journals by Elsevier are eligible for open access publication without extra cost.

Emerald Publishing group

2016-2018 30 open access vouchers were issued to authors at Dutch universities in 2017, and 45 vouchers were issued in 2018. These vouchers can be used for all periodicals issued by Emerald and can be requested via the open access contact person at the library of the respective institute before the acceptance of the article.

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW)

2017-2019 Corresponding authors from VSNU’s universities can publish open access free of charge in 228 hybrid journals of LWW. Full open access periodicals are not included in the agreement.

SAGE 2017-2019 Corresponding authors from VSNU’s universities can publish open access free of charge for 786 SAGE Choice journals. For publications in one of the 40 journals of


learned societies partnered with the publisher, SAGE will ask the society for permission to grant 100% discount on open access publishing costs. Publication in SAGE’s Pure Gold open access journals is not included in the agreement, but a 20% reduction on open access publishing costs is offered.

Springer 2018-2021 Articles by corresponding authors from Dutch universities and the KNAW will be published in open access, at no cost to the author in 1,850 journals within the Springer OpenChoice programme. Journal titles from learned societies, BioMedCentral and SpringerOpen are excluded in the agreement. There is a maximum of 2,080 items. If this number is reached, the remaining items will no longer be eligible for open access, and the agreement will be terminated.

Thieme 2016-2018 The agreement is valid for 52 journals and for the universities of Leiden, Groningen, Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Maastricht. Corresponding authors of these institutions receive a discount of 25% on the article processing charge1 (APC), which amounts to a fee of € 1,875 for open access publication of their article.

Walter de Gruyter

2016-2018 Corresponding authors from an institution affiliated with the VSNU may publish open access in any hybrid journals at a discount of 90% of the APC price. The participating institution pays the remaining 10% based on the overview of open access articles provided by Walter de Gruyter. Effective 24 January 2017, all Dutch universities are members of the open access Institutional membership. Under the terms of the agreement the members are entitled to a 20% discount on open access fees for pure open access publications.

Wiley 2016-2019 As of 4 March 2016, corresponding authors from all Dutch universities may indicate to publish open access upon an acceptance of their article in 1400 hybrid journals, without extra charges. Wiley also publishes 60 full open access journals, but those are not covered in the agreement.

Table 1. Publishers, deal duration and conditions for open access publishing (Publisher deals, n.d.)

Of the 11 publishers listed above, five deals are ending in 2018, with most

agreements covering hybrid journals2 but not full open access journals. New contracts with publishers which explicitly include open access publishing must be negotiated and renewed regularly, through partnerships led by the VSNU. While deals with established publishers signify progress towards open science, investment in open access publishers and online repositories such as Frontier and PLOS are needed to create services that make the Green Open Access3 route a desirable, familiar, and accepted means of publishing. NWO’s open access mandate thus requires researchers to make their publications open access immediately from the moment of publication onwards and will only grant open access publishing fee in a fully open access journal. Open access publication of articles in hybrid

1 A fee paid to the publisher to make an article free at point of access (Source: Glossary, openaccess.nl) 2 Hybrid open access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. This status

typically requires the payment of a publication fee to the publisher. (Source: Glossary, openaccess.nl) 3 Green open access means that the published article or the final peer-reviewed manuscript is self-archived by

the researcher (or a representative) in an online repository (Source: H2020 Model Grant Agreement)


journals will no longer be paid for. Business models and corresponding work processes suitable for open access publishing in different disciplines and types of research (e.g. basic and applied research) are yet to be identified and tested.

3.2 Making research data optimally suitable for reuse

The second ambition requires researchers to make their own data as easily accessible as possible so that others could benefit from them. The storing and sharing of data will require a reinforcement of the ICT infrastructure. Discipline-specific data protocols within technical and policy-based preconditions are needed to ensure a consistent and FAIR4 access to research data. Furthermore, researchers would need training and support in documentation for the purposes of verification, to ensure that details of all research steps and analyses are completed, for others to make sense of the results of research data as well as the raw data. In 2005, the Netherlands became the first country where all universities had their own online repository, which is linked to a national portal – NARCIS. The actual number of closed, embargoed, restricted and open publications since 2000 calculated by NARCIS (2018) shows that although there is a slight increase of open access publications over the years (except for 2011 and 2013), most scholarly publications remained closed or restricted.

Research data management and privacy issues, proprietary aspects, and ethics are barriers common in open science to all fields. In intensive data-sharing fields, the reticence to sharing data depends on ethical and cultural limitations and boundaries. Table 2 shows the total number of datasets available and access types across various fields in the DANS repository of the NARCIS portal. A clear field-specific variation, or disciplinary differences is observed. Intensive data-sharing fields such as humanities and science and technology have a large number of open access datasets, while restricted data-sharing fields such as life sciences, medicine and healthcare have the least number of open access datasets.

Classification Open Access

Closed Access

Restricted Access

Total

Science and technology 357 82.6%

6 1.4%

69 16.0%

432 100%

Life sciences, medicine and healthcare

221 1%

22578 98.4%

148 0.6%

22947 100%

Humanities 30782 74.9%

99 0.2%

10236 24.9%

41117 100%

Law and public administration 501 69.5%

68 9.4%

152 21.1%

721 100%

Behavioural and educational sciences

682 58%

206 17.5%

288 24.5%

1176 100%

Social sciences 1789 50.4%

321 9%

1441 40.6%

3551 100%

Economics and Business Administration

134 55.8%

27 11.3%

79 32.9%

240 100%

Interdisciplinary science 94 1.3%

6862 98.5%

13 0.2%

6969 100%

Table 2. Total number of dataset and access type across various fields (NARCIS datasets, n.d.)

4 FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable


The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enforced by the EU on 25 May 2018. While the GDPR does strengthen data protection and privacy of EU persons, it also complicates the proprietary aspect of data as institutions and individuals are still trying to understand how changes in privacy laws will impact their work. A global online survey of 1,200 researchers administered by Elsevier and Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University, found that researcher’s attitudes towards data sharing are positive but with strong sense of ownership towards research data (Figure 1). Sharing of data mostly occurred amongst direct research collaborators, suggesting that trust is an important aspect of sharing data. Cultural reasons for not sharing will require further study as the concept of open data speaks directly to basic questions of ownership, responsibility, and control.

Figure 1. Research data ownership before and after publication (%, n=1162, Berghmans et al., 2017)

3.3 Corresponding evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers

Recognition of and rewards for researchers are presently lacking for their efforts made and results achieved in open science. In 2016, open science is included in the assessment of research applications for NWO via the provision of open access and data management plans. The NPOS coalition: NWO, VSNU and VH will examine the use of alternative indicators, such as altmetrics in research assessment and their implications for opening current knowledge production and sharing practices in the Netherlands during 2017. Nonetheless, recognition of and reward for researchers only address the funder’s perspective and the research application phase.

Dutch universities do little to none in terms of rewarding researchers for practicing open science. This can be observed from the appointment criteria of tenure track policy across all Dutch universities, which generally include research, teaching, valorisation, and management leadership. For example, Delft University of Technology has the following criteria in the research aspect of their tenure track policy: (1) conducting research, (2) supervising PhD students, (3) acquisition of indirect government funding and contract research and (4) publications. Open science was not included nor integrated into any of the four research elements. At the national level, the standard evaluation protocol (SEP2015-2020) has included relevance to society to be assessed in research evaluation of disciplines. However, the document does not explicitly refer to open science practices.


Hence, it is still unclear how individuals would be rewarded for practicing open science and how it could positively impact their career in a concrete manner at Dutch universities.

4 Impact

The VSNU agreed with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to monitor open access publications according to the definition framework. Open access (OA) articles are divided into three categories:

A. Gold: Open articles in open access (DOAJ) journals; B. Hybrid: Open articles in paid journals and open articles in open journals that are not

listed in the DOAJ; C. Green: Articles that are only available open access because they are offered through

a ‘trusted repository’.

The study only looked at articles that are aimed at a scientific audience; were peer reviewed; and were published in an academic journal. Table 3 below shows the percentages by category. Results show that 42% (nearly 23,000 articles) of the peer-reviewed articles from 2016 from the 14 Dutch universities are available open access.

Gold, DOAJ OA Hybrid, not DOAJ OA Only Green OA Total OA

13% 20% 9% 42%

Table 3. Percentages of OA publications in 2016 Dutch universities by category (VSNU, n.d.)

Open access publication trends in the Netherlands were analysed based upon the Open Science Monitor (OSM) data, showing that open access publishing is 33% of the total number of Dutch publications5, gradually increasing since 2009, especially for Gold OA. The difference between the total percentages of open access publications from OSM and VSNU lies in the types of documents included in the analysis, and how they are tagged6. The following figures show a 5-country OA publishing comparison (DK, NL, NO, SE, UK) including major research institutions in each of the countries, where the Netherlands is slightly lower than the Nordic countries and the UK in OA publishing (Figure 2). OA publication in the Netherlands is predominantly green, with 75% of OA publications (Figure 3).

5 The methodological tagging of OA publications in large databases is described alongside with the OSM, using

green and gold OA only: OA that is not gold is green by default. To further substantiate the findings, Scopus data were compared to Web of Science data, showing almost no differences (short case report van Leeuwen, 2018).

6 In the OSM, only articles and reviews are included.


Figure 2. Degree of openness across five countries

Figure 3. Gold vs. Green OA across five countries

Table 4 shows that the total share of open access publishing vary widely across

Dutch universities, from 31% to 48%. There is a strong focus on Green Open Access in general, with 85% of all OA output for Eindhoven University of Technology.

University P all P Toll

Access P OA Share

OA Share Gold OA

Share Green OA

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%DK

DK

NL

NL

NL

NL

NO

NO

SE

SE

SE

SE

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

Closed

OA

40%

39%

45%

55%

43%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%DK

DK

NL

NL

NL

NL

NO

NO

SE

SE

SE

SE

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

UK

GOLD

Green

72%

75%

66%

71%

81%


Delft University of Technology 10140 6996 3144 31% 23% 77%

Eindhoven University of Technology

6243 4264 1979 32% 15% 85%

Erasmus University Rotterdam 15836 9430 6406 40% 24% 76%

Leiden University 15829 8264 7565 48% 19% 81%

Maastricht University 11222 6830 4392 39% 32% 68%

Radboud University 16589 8879 7710 46% 26% 74%

Tilburg University 2910 1975 935 32% 26% 74%

University of Amsterdam 22240 12990 9250 42% 26% 74%

University of Groningen 17504 9801 7703 44% 22% 78%

University of Twente 6227 4101 2126 34% 27% 73%

Utrecht University 22114 12758 9356 42% 26% 74%

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 17988 10595 7393 41% 30% 70%

Wageningen University & Research

11421 7236 4185 37% 31% 69%

Table 4. Dutch universities in the Leiden Ranking and their share of Open Access

While open access publishing is on the increase, open data is mainly in the planning phase. It requires a cultural change in fields that are not used to data repositories. This situation is comparable across Europe, as was shown in the European Study (Peter et al., 2018) ‘Monitoring the evolution and benefits of Responsible Research and Innovation’ (MoRRI). Open data was one of the indicators for Open Science that was dropped in MoRRI due to lack of data.

5 Lessons learnt

While the NPOS has clear drivers and national ambitions for open science, the actual state of affairs at the grassroot level is only progressing slowly, especially on the institutional and individual level. Many stakeholders are involved including but not limited to the research communities, funding bodies, publishers, and research institutions. However, their role in the future of open science is still in the questioning phase. Since researchers feel they are at heart of the practice of sharing and re-use of data, open science development would benefit from taking a bottom-up approach and a change in scientific culture, whereby researchers are stimulated and rewarded for sharing data and where institutions implement and support research data sharing policies, including mandates. The NPOS’ key area (1) 100% open access to publications, is currently running ahead of key area (2) making research data optimally suitable for reuse, and (3) corresponding evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers. Since NPOS is an open science mandate which provided the Netherlands with an initial set of actions and instructions, all actors should now try to bridge the gap between policy and practice and ensure researchers are able to implement them.


6 Policy conclusions

The operationalization of the policies needs to be translated into actions at the institutional and individual level at Dutch universities. VSNU will need targeted action plan and open science agreement with every university and faculty, to lay out concrete activities regarding open access publishing, training in data management, institutional update on library repository, monitor and evaluate researchers in all aspect of the research cycle, and include fixed percentages of working time on digital infrastructural work. Monitoring and reporting on these activities can scarcely be found as of writing. Transparent individual and institutional periodical and systematic reporting on the three key areas identified by NPOS is called for to ensure progress on every level.


References

Berghmans, S., Cousijn, H., & Deakin, G., Meijer, I., Mulligan, A., Plume, A., de Rijcke, S., Rushforth, A., Tatum, C., van Leeuwen, T. & Waltman, L. (2017, April 12). Open Data: The Researcher Perspective (pp. 1-48, CWTS Publication). Retrieved from https://www.cwts.nl/download/f-53w2.pdf

Government of the Netherlands (2016, April 4). Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science. Retrieved from https://www.government.nl/documents/reports/2016/04/04/amsterdam-call-for-action-on-open-science

NARCIS datasets. (n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from https://www.narcis.nl/search/coll/dataset/Language/en

National Plan Open Science (NPOS, n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2018 from https://www.openscience.nl/

Open Access. (n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from http://www.openaccess.nl/

Peter, V., Maier, F.J., Mejlgaard, N., Bloch C., Madsen, E., Griessler, E., Wuketich, M., Meijer, I., Woolley, R., Lindner, R., Bührer, S., Jäger, A., Tsipouri, L. & Stilgo, J. (2018). Monitoring the evolution and benefits of responsible research and innovation in Europe – Summarising insights from the MoRRI project. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017. Retrieved from http://www.technopolis-group.com/report/final-report-summarising-insights-from-the-morri-project-d13/

Publisher deals. (n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from http://www.openaccess.nl/en/in-the-netherlands/publisher-deals

The Netherlands and you. (n.d.). Factsheet: Results of the EU Presidency (pp. 1-4). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from https://www.netherlandsandyou.nl/documents/publications/2016/11/09/factsheet-resultaten-eu2016-1-juli-engels.pdf

van Wezenbeek, W., Touwen, H., Versteeg, A., & van Wesenbeeck, A. (2017). National plan open science. Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. DOI: 10.4233/uuid:9e9fa82e-06c1-4d0d-9e20-5620259a6c65

VSNU (n.d.) Percentages of open access publications in 2016. Retrieved July 18, 2018, from https://vsnu.nl/en_GB/percentages-open-access-publications-2016-


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This case study reports activities outlined in the Netherlands Plan for Open Science (NPOS) according to its three key ambitions for open science: (1) 100% open access to publications, (2) making research data optimally suitable for reuse and (3) corresponding evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers. Barriers and impact of the NPOS were identified and discussed using secondary data and sources. The report concludes with lessons learnt and policy conclusions, calling for transparent individual and institutional periodical and systematic reporting for further analysis.

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