EUROPEAN UNION - LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN BI-REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH RESULTS

European Union - Latin America and the Caribbean bi-regional conference on open access to research results

 

Moderators and speakers

The bi-regional European Union - Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Conference on Open Access to Research Results was held on 6-7 June 2023. The aim of this conference was to take the open science dialogue between the two regions to a higher level, collaborate on open access policies, plan coordinated actions, shape the future of research through open and collaborative practices, share best practices, and gain new perspectives and inspiration for scientific research.

Martin Penny and Michael Arentoft, representatives of the European Commission, chaired the bi-regional conference. The moderators and panellists who participated are listed below (in chronological order of presentation).

Representatives of the European Commission:

• Maria Cristina Russo, Director for Global Approach and International Cooperation in R&I, European Commission.
• Michael Arentoft, Head of the Open Science and Research Infrastructures Unit, European Commission.
• Martin Penny, Head of Unit for Global Approach & International Cooperation in R&I - International Cooperation I (Europe, Americas and thematic coherence), European Commission.
• Javier López-Albacete, Open Science and Research Infrastructures, European Commission.
• Alea López de San Román, Open Science and Research Infrastructures, European Commission.

Representatives of invited countries:

• Gonzalo Arévalo Nieto, Director General of Research Planning, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain.
• Bianca Amaro, General Coordinator of Scientific and Technical Information, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Brazil.
• Lilliana Rodríguez Barquero, Coordinator of the Research Vice Chancellors Commission, National Council of Chancellors, Costa Rica.
• Juan Maldini, Director of Digital Services, National Agency for Research and Innovation, Uruguay.
• Patricia Muñoz Palma, Deputy Director of Networks, Strategy and Knowledge, ANID, Chile.
• Robinson Zapata Pino, Head of Scientific and Technological Information Department, SENACYT, Panama.
• Paola Castro, Leader of the Columbian Scientific Information Network, MINCIENCIAS, Colombia.
• Pilar Paneque, Director of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), Spain.
• Claudia Córdova Yamauchi, Director of Evaluation and Knowledge Management, CONCYTEC, Peru.
• Eloy Rodrigues, Univ. of Minho, Portugal.

Representatives of regional initiatives from Latin America and Europe:

• Adrián Bonilla, Executive Director, EU-LAC Foundation.
• Claudia Romano, International Cooperation Agency of Uruguay. 
• Andrea Mora, Chair of LA Referencia.
• Arianna Becerril, Executive Director of Redalyc. 
• Abel L Packer, Director of SciELO.
• Pierre Mounier, Coordinator of OPERAS, Deputy Director of OpenEdition, Coordinator of DIAMAS.
• Volker Beckman, Co-Chair of the Board of the European Open Science Cloud. 
• Laura Rovelli, Coordinator of FOLEC-CLACSO.
• Eva Mendez, Carlos III University, CoARA Board of Directors.
• Ana María Cetto, Chair of UNESCO's Open Science Advisory Committee.

The authors of the report Open Access Policies in Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union: Progress towards a political dialogue:

• Pilar Rico-Castro, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.
• Laura Valeria Bonora, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.

 

WELCOME AND OPENING: MODERATING: MARTIN PENNY AND MICHAEL ARENTOFT

The welcoming and opening session was given by Maria Cristina Russo, who delivered a clear message on the strong political interest in open science and the synergies that currently exist between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean in this area. She stressed that the time for science and technology policy collaboration has reached a point where open science is its most important challenge and argued that the EU and LAC are strategic regions that are destined to collaborate and change the paradigm of research activity development.

This message was supported and echoed by Michael Arentoft, who presented the policies and strategies developed and implemented by the Open Science and Research Infrastructures Unit  of the European Commission, highlighting the importance of, and the need to initiate, this policy dialogue, begun through the conference and recently-published expert report "Open Access Policies in Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union: Progress towards a political dialogue".

This message was supported and amplified by Adrian Bonilla and Claudia Romano. Both stressed the fundamental need for such joint initiatives and to complement them with the necessary financial instruments, through specific initiatives and programmes aimed at creating a common research space between the European Union and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Gonzalo Arévalo, representative of the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain - the country that will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from 1 July 2023 - stated that he sees the specific actions that will soon be promoted between the EU and LAC, on which both regions have been working for more than a year and a half now and which will form part of the Spanish strategy for the Presidency, as a great opportunity.

All addresses presented a strong and unanimous political message, supported by declarations and policy documents published in recent years, and above all by the Council Conclusions on high quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable academic publishing of May 2023[1] and the EU Council Conclusions on international cooperation, open science and European missions of June 2022[2].

 

PRESENTATION OF THE REPORT OPEN ACCESS POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: PROGRESS TOWARDS A POLITICAL DIALOGUE BY THE AUTHORS

Pilar Rico-Castro and Laura Bonora presented the report "Open Access Policies in Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union", which describes the open access policies to scientific production that have been developed in both regions, the common challenges and convergence paths faced by both regions and includes specific recommendations for joint public action on which to base intra-LAC and EU-LAC collaboration. The authors explained that this work is the first step towards initiating a bi-regional political dialogue and an instrument that provides information on the situation in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and the European Union. The content describes, in a homogeneous and systematic way, the science, technology and innovation systems determined through (1) the institutional framework of STI activity - funding, implementation, communication and evaluation; (2) open access policies - their level of development and the entity responsible; (3) open science digital infrastructures - repositories, journals and curriculum management systems. In addition, it includes references to LAC regional initiatives, an analysis of challenges common to both regions and specific recommendations for concrete action. They are structured around 4 strategic objectives, 7 specific actions and 19 concrete measures.

 

OBJECTIVES OF THE ROADMAP: POLICY CONDITIONS AND FRAMEWORK FOR A COORDINATED APPROACH TO OPEN SCIENCE BETWEEN LAC AND THE EU. MODERATIN: ANA MARÍA CETTO

Javier López highlighted the work done by Spain and Portugal in getting to know and participating in Latin American initiatives such as LA Referencia, Latindex or SciELO, as both regions have a common good with very similar ambitions. Furthermore, he mentioned the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Tripartite Governance during his intervention, and its importance as an open science infrastructure, what the European Commission is working towards and the relevance of the Horizon Europe programme as the funding tool for the implementation of the EOSC. Finally, on the subject of assessment, Javier López invited universities, funding agents, research centres, researcher associations and accreditation agencies to join the initiative CoARA (Coalition for the Advancement of the Research Assessment).

For her part, Bianca Amaro stressed the importance of having funding tools and the commitment that each country must make internally through its governmental authorities in relation to STI systems and specifically on open science issues. She also pointed out how important it has been for Latin America to have centralised and collaborative initiatives such as LA Referencia.

This message was supported by Lilliana Rodríguez, who presented the great importance for countries like Costa Rica to have the support of international initiatives such as RDA, LA Referencia or COAR. She also commented that Costa Rica is currently working on its national open access policy and referred to the role of the National Council of Chancellors in promoting good practices in open science and, above all, in improving the awareness of society in general.

Juan Maldini then referred to the current maturity of open access initiatives in LAC, which have a long history in the non-commercial model. In the case of Uruguay, he specified that there is no legal framework, but there are institutional frameworks, and he reflected on the fact that this is the case in several countries in the region and not only in Uruguay. He stressed that all the initiatives discussed in the report are important for the region and emphasised the major impact that the EU Council Conclusions on scholarly publishing, published in March 2023, will have on non-commercial open access models.

Ana M. Cetto, moderator of this panel, commented that the EU has the advantage of a common political space with clear economic support in which its open science initiatives can be integrated, and suggested that there should be a common or equivalent space in Latin America and pointed to LA Referencia as a potential example of this.

All panellists mentioned the need for decentralised and cooperative infrastructures and international coordination and cooperation at different levels: political, technical, financial, etc., as the main needs. As opportunities, they pointed to the strengthening and extension of the non-commercial open access scholarly publishing model, as well as the growing influence of regional collaborative projects such as SciELO, Redalyc, Latindex or LA Referencia.

 

MAIN CHALLENGES IN THE DESIGN OF OPEN ACCESS POLICIES: IMPROVING THE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPEN SCIENCE PRACTICES. MODERATIN: ELOY RODRIGUES

Alea López de San Román stressed that the four key elements in the design and implementation of public policies are: (1) facilitators, (2) obligations, (3) incentives and (4) financing. She put particular emphasis on facilitators and pointed out the need for appropriate legislative frameworks, with clear obligations related to the meaning of public action. Regarding obligations, she explained that beneficiaries of the Horizon Europe research funding programme must ensure open access to scientific publications via repositories immediately upon publication. She added that these obligations should be linked to incentives, with specific reference to evaluation systems. Finally, she highlighted funding as a key element in supporting initiatives to promote open access.

For her part, Patricia Muñoz Palma pointed out the main challenges in Chile and the region: (1) the need to strengthen the ecosystem through the development of human capital by means of a model of knowledge generation and scientific communication; (2) national support for journals to improve their quality and visibility in accordance with the public funding mechanisms of each country; (3) the proposal of new models for the evaluation of projects and research personnel that value open access publication; (4) the promotion and support of infrastructures; and (5) the generation of explicit policies that favour and encourage open access to scientific information and research data.

Robinson Zapata Pino, presented Panama's Strategic Plan for Science and Technology. During his presentation, he pointed out the main challenges for Panama in the implementation of its open science policies, among which he highlighted the need to strengthen and support national repositories and to create a national aggregator that allows it to be part of other international initiatives such as LA Referencia. He also stressed that, since last year, SENACYT has been working on a national plan for the management of research data and that this requires specific profiles for data managers. For this reason, SENACYT has initiated a training plan for specialised staff such as librarians. Finally, he noted that Panama is working on its national journal aggregator and on further promoting culturalization in favour of open science.

Paola Castro then presented the main obstacles in the design of open access policies in Colombia. Among them she highlighted: (1) the lack of awareness of open science practices among the agents of the Science, Technology and Innovation System; (2) the disarticulation of the actors responsible for the implementation and development of the policy; (3) the lack of knowledge about the scope and impact of open science at the institutional level and members of the system; (4) administrative changes and uncertainty; and, finally, (5) the low funding for the support and implementation of open access policies.

Unanimously, all panellists stressed that there are clear challenges in terms of implementing effective open access policies: (1) strengthen and promote open access infrastructures and ensure their governance and long-term sustainability; (2) articulate new evaluation models, metrics and incentives that embrace open science principles and best practices; (3) consolidate the funding and cooperation model to strengthen the implementation of open science components; and (4) develop a common framework of guidelines and protocols for each of the open science components.

 

THE ROLE OF OPEN SCIENCE DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE AT REGIONAL LEVEL IN LAC AND THE EU. MODERATING: PILAR RICO-CASTRO

Arianna Becerril described Redalyc, an infrastructure for the advancement of non-commercial open access publishing based on the paradigm of science as a global public good. He also pointed out the non-commercial publishing model developed by Redalyc and the great importance that this initiative has had on diamond academic publishing not only in LAC but also in Europe. He stressed the need for financial instruments to guarantee the sustainability of these infrastructures and highlighted the importance of these types of initiatives collaborating with each other, highlighting the existing agreements between Redalyc and LA Referencia.

Abel Packer commented on how the SciELO initiative contributes to the development of national journal support policies and the proper performance of the full research cycle. He stressed that SciELO, in collaboration with other LAC platforms, is open to EU support and to sharing its implementation model with other regions. Finally, he indicated that it is necessary to develop competitive services from infrastructures and defended the relationship with other commercial initiatives.

Pierre Mounier stressed that it is not always possible to implement laws and mandates without the necessary infrastructures to do so, so sometimes infrastructures need to precede policies. He presented the "Action Plan for Diamond Academic Publishing" which charts the way towards a federated skills centre with the support of EU projects such as DIAMAS, PALOMERA and CRAFT-OA. Finally, he stressed the need for Europe to be aware of the Redalyc or SciELO initiatives in order to work together to improve the services and infrastructures available to the research community, citing the Open Research Europe (ORE) portal as an example, and to see possible synergies between these initiatives.

Andrea Mora presented LA Referencia as an essential element for the development of an open science ecosystem in LAC. LA Referencia is currently consolidating a series of agreements with the main initiatives in the region in order to improve the interoperability of institutional repositories. She highlighted the work being done for the diagnosis and monitoring of the implementation of UNESCO recommendations in the region and, finally, reflected in a clear message the need for policies, infrastructure and literacy to move forward together and in a coordinated manner.

Volker Beckman presented the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), which aims to create an ecosystem for the production, storage, access, long-term preservation and governance of research data by leveraging existing services and infrastructures. EOSC is an interface, a community and a process that seeks to respond to the needs of the research community throughout the entire data lifecycle (including open access to scientific publications). Volker Beckman mentioned that the construction of the EOSC is being done in a collaborative way between the European Commission, the member states and the EOSC Partnership community, with financial support from the European Commission of around 1 billion euros.

The speakers in this session agreed that the biggest challenges for open science are: (1) promoting scientific communication through non-commercial open access models, as well as the necessary cultural changes among research communities regarding open access publishing and reuse of research data; (2) developing and supporting technological infrastructures, as well as exchanging best practices and creating common standards, guidelines and concrete services; (3) deepening partnerships between regional and international open science initiatives; (4) driving the necessary changes in research evaluation, providing the research community with an aligned, quality and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem.

 

RESEARCH ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS AND OPEN SCIENCE PRINCIPLES. MODERATING: JAVIER LÓPEZ ALBACETE

Laura Rovelli highlighted the main challenges of research evaluation reform in LAC: (1) of a cultural nature: integrating and valuing open access practices as a potential part of quality research, with appropriate recognition; (2) of a political nature: aligning regional evaluation systems with open science principles and values through the implementation of existing regulations; (3) related to infrastructures, which should be federated, shared, interoperable, sustainable, supportive of bibliodiversity and multilingualism; (4) related to training and recognition of citizen participation. Finally, she invited the whole community to adhere to DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment).

Eva Méndez recalled the importance of supporting the reform of research evaluation systems, of exchanging knowledge and good practices, of sharing platforms with state-of-the-art evaluation practices, of supporting the development of a coherent evaluation ecosystem and of further improving these evaluation methods. On behalf of CoARA, she invited universities, research centres, academies, researcher associations, public or private funding bodies, national or regional authorities that apply some form of evaluation to research activity and their associations to join this initiative, which she described as a channel of communication and exchange of experiences that is essential for tackling change together.

In terms of how to link up and what the common objectives are between FOLEC and CoARA, both panellists highlighted the following: (1) cooperating towards a comprehensive, articulated and incremental reform of evaluation services; (2) strengthening and improving the interoperability of open science digital infrastructures; (3) encouraging scholarly communication oriented towards non-commercial and sustainable models based on collaboration; (4) sharing good practices in terms of criteria, tools and processes; (5) valuing contributions hosted in repositories and diamond journals, and not only those published in mainstream journals; and (6) moving away from the use of bibliometric indicators of journal impact as a criterion of quality. The strong synergies between FOLEC and CoARA were reflected in the session through their common approaches on how to carry out participatory and aligned reforms through the creation of forums for exchange of experience and learning.

 

CHALLENGES OF RESEARCH EVALUATION AT NATIONAL LEVEL. MODERATIN: JAVIER LÓPEZ ALBACETE

Pilar Paneque stressed that it is essential for evaluation agencies to define the instruments for evaluation and to be able to make extensive use of them. She highlighted the signing of the DORA declaration and ANECA's adhesion to CoARA as major advances of her institution and pointed out that Spain is one of the countries leading the latter initiative in terms of the number of signatory entities, despite the fact that the Spanish system is very bureaucratic. Therefore, she stressed, ANECA's challenge to have substantial changes in the evaluation processes in the next national calls for proposals is of great importance.

Claudia Córdova Yamauchi presented the Regulations for the Qualification and Classification and Registration of Researchers of the National System of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (RENACYT), Peru's system for evaluating research activity. With 4 years of use, RENACYT assesses and evaluates training, consultancy, scalability levels, patents, teaching and direction of theses and dissertations, through a single window and open all year round, with a 3-year validity. RENACYT is currently undergoing a review process by the research community.

Both speakers stressed the importance of having clear and commonly used research merit assessment tools across institutions, both nationally and internationally, and the need for these to be aligned. Both pointed out that these instruments must be agreed upon and their use articulated with the different actors in the system: public decision-makers, managers, research institutions, etc. 

 

CONCLUSIONS

Martin Penny, Michael Arentoft and Heike Schneider gave the closing speech of this bi-regional European Union - Latin America and the Caribbean conference on open access to research results. All highlighted positively the launch of this policy dialogue and the European Commission's interest in learning first-hand about open access initiatives that have been launched in Latin America and the Caribbean. They highlighted how enriching it was to learn about the state of maturity of these as well as the actors and agents that promote open access policies and/or initiatives in the LAC region. They also agreed that there are important synergies with European initiatives with a high degree of convergence, which opens the way to work in a coordinated manner between the two regions. Finally, Heike Schneider commented on the adoption of the New Agenda for EU-Latin America and Caribbean Relations[3] which proposes a modernised and stronger strategic partnership through strengthened political dialogue, stimulating trade and investment, and fostering more sustainable societies.