The Jussieu Call (http://jussieucall.org/) launched in October 2017 now counts more than 100 signatures from universities, research institutions, professional organizations of scientific and technical information, public scientific editions. Signatures mostly French and European, but also from Canada, Latin America, India…
This newsletter will regularly review the actions that signatories are taking in their institutions to promote Open Science and bibliodiversity.
In recent months, there has been a proliferation of initiatives in favour of Open Science in all countries and in fields ranging from writing methods to the evaluation of researchers and new publishing and peer-review methods, and based on new economic models. Under the effect of diversity encouraged and supported by institutions, the old system of writing and publishing concentrated in the hands and for the benefit of a few is being rebuilt.
More and more countries or institutions now have an Open Science Development Plan and universities are appointing Vice-Deans or -Presidents for Research, Innovation AND Open Science.
France has just implemented two important national initiatives for the development of Open Science, following the appointment of a Scientific Advisor for Open Science to the Director-General for Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI):
More and more universities are strongly encouraging or sometimes even requiring their researchers to deposit the full text of their writings in open institutional or national archives. The University of Liège has long made this an obligation (http://recteur.blogs.ulg.ac.be/?p=103). In May 2018, the Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation voted a decree, close to article 30 of the French law “pour une République numérique” (http://archive.pfwb.be/10000000208d0d1) but going further by extending this deposit obligation to all universities of the Federation. In France, the University of Aix-Marseille (AMU) has instituted a bonus for its depositing laboratories (https://oaamu.hypotheses.org/472).
These various national and international actions are the expression of the positive implementation of the Jussieu Call. They are the prelude to the resumption in hand by the research institutions of the control of their expenses of access to scientific publications and the allocation of the sums saved to the realization of Open Science. This is evidenced by the very hard positions of institutions in many countries in the current negotiations with publishing oligopolies.
Already, three French institutions have made public a policy for open science in line with the principles of the Jussieu Call. The University of Lorraine ( http://factuel.univ-lorraine.fr/node/8472) and the University of Rennes 1 (https://www.univ-rennes1.fr/actualites/27032018/lopen-access-luniversite-de-rennes-1) and the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès (https://openarchiv.hypotheses.org/446) have decided to allocate the savings made following the non-renewal of the Springer contract or other resources whose cost/use ratio proved too high, to financial support for various open science initiatives:
The University of Lorraine is also becoming the first French institution to join the Fair Open Access Alliance, which offers methodological and financial support to journals wishing to leave major commercial publishers and join open publishing platforms.
Please keep us informed of your institutions’ Open Science initiatives in line with the Jussieu Call. We will publish them in our next newsletters.