The EC's funding scheme, Horizon2020 will be implementing an open access (OA) policy for all publications, and it will also launch the Open Research Data Pilot. Research administrators in Germany have become increasingly interested in this topic at the EC and also at the ERC, and want to find out more about what this means to them. The University of Göttingen European Research Office (who also pages dedicated to OA, FP7/H2020 and ERC on their site, see here for example) in conjunction with the University Library, Electronic Publications Unit held one-day event, targeted at research administrators around Germany to find out about these topics . It was a highly well-attended event, space was limited to give plenty of time for small break out groups and discussion.
Over 70 attendants. Research administrators in Germany are very interested in the OA policies of the ERC and EC, and they are a perfect way to reach out to researchers on topics of open access and open data. They raised many pertinent points and questions, which are summarised below.
Three presentations started the day:
- Presented the ins and outs of the Open Data Pilot
- The research data managed should relate to the underlying publication
- He explained that DMP doesn't have to be in the grant application, but at the first review
- Changes in H2020 to the longer embargo period of 12 months for SSH
- The ERC Work Programme 2015 offers the possibility for ERC Frontier Research actions to take part in the open data pilot. The final decision about a participation by the ERC in the open data pilot in future Work Programmes has not yet been taken.
- How the OpenAIRE infrastructure can help research administrators, Practical steps for projects, where to find repositories, set responsible people in projects to oversee the OA responsibilities
The table topics were grouped as follows:
- OpenAIRE
- ERC and Open Access
- Research Data Management
- Local repository support at UGOE
Results of World Cafe: Questions from the audience can be grouped as follows:
- What kind of sanctions are there for not providing articles in open access?
- What is the EC’s policy to predatory journals? A: EC tends to support a white list of journals it supports. See the Romeo service for example.
- Should we ask researchers to deposit in institutional or disciplinary repositories?
- I have a DRIVER repository, why is it being harvested by OpenAIRE?
- Do I have to become OpenAIRE compliant for my repository to be harvested? How do I attach project information to projects?
- How much money is provided per publication? Is there a cap?
- How long after the project’s end is OA to be provided?
- Is this applicable to Marie Curie actions? Or rather, to what projects does this Gold pilot apply?
- How is the organisational set up, how to apply and to whom?
- What if more publications are needed to be paid for during the project?
- Can you use other funds, switch funds, during a project to pay for Gold OA APCs?
- Will the open data pilot pay the costs of storing data in a discipline based data repository (there are costs at times)? A: yes this can be an eligible cost.
- When is the DMP due? A: not with the proposal, but 6 months after.
- What is a data scientist? This could be a person who bridges the gap between the disciplines and the infrastructure providers.
- The DMP will need a lot of support in order to create it - who will give this? Given this is a relatively new concept, we need to identify who can support this within institutions, and allocate responsbile people.
- Participants often spoke of the 'golden triangle' – research and development the library and the research centres, direct to the presidential offices. This was echoed by many German research administrators
- Give the researchers some incentives, no threat of sanctions
- This is 'best efforts' – hard to define, but the ‘spirit’ of the policy should be that OA is here to stay and if we all work together to support researchers, it will be for a better good. Simply try your best!
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Involve different departments in your institution, e.g. those who support researchers. Often this is a good opportunity for cross-departmental work, as OA, and especially reserach data management, can touch all areas of an institution.
- Try to invite someone from the EC to introduce the policy, via remote participation is also possible
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Invite informal discussion in small groups Break out groups are a must. Make lots of small table to encourage discussion.
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Sweets are crucial for an active, thinking brain!!
**Photos with kind courtesy of Astrid Orth**