In the crystal ball: report from the Swedish webinar on the future of Open Science in Europe

Our participants were mostly happy with the program offered, but had some objections and some ideas for making it better next time. We had 171 registered participants, mostly from university libraries in Sweden, but also other research stakeholders both in Sweden and the Nordic countries.

We had four presentations and a group discussion at the end. Liber's President, Jeannette Fry, gave us an introduction to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), especially aimed for libraries. It is evident that EOSC is a huge concept to grasp, making it hard for the individual actors to find their role within this new world. Michael Markie, Director of Publishing at F1000, gave us an overview of the Open Research Europe (ORE), the new publishing platform for those who have funding from the research programmes of the European research programmes. Since this is a somewhat new way of publishing, we had invited two researchers, Jade Khalife (Lund university) and Björn Nystedt (SciLifeLab), who had published in similar platforms hosted by the F1000. They told us about their experiences, and how they see these platforms fitting with the general publishing landscape.

Finally we had an exposé of the Swedish Open Science development from Jonas Björck, Director General of Forte. Forte is one of the Swedish funders who have joined cOAlition S, and are about to put Plan S into practice. Many of the participants did not have time to discuss, but the ones who did were assigned breakout rooms. The webinar ended with a collective discussion. It is evident that EOSC has the potential to bring about a huge shift in the European landscape of Open Science, but it is urgent that the vision is put to work in the everyday work of librarians and others serving researchers.