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Pro-Vice-Provost for UCL Library Services leads the development of a European wide Open Science note

18 March 2021

Dr Paul Ayris (UCL Library Services & UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship) chaired a working group from the League of European Research Universities (LERU) to develop a summary report on the next steps for Open Science.

Decorative. Person pointing at small artificial clouds

Implementing Open Science outlines the progress implementing Open Science by LERU members, and the opportunities and challenges that still lie ahead. It makes 41 recommendations on what universities can do to take Open Science forward. 

The paper's findings include:

  • Open Science is a process, not a single event, that will take many years to accomplish.
  • Universities will focus on individual priorities and needs: there is no ‘one size fits all’.
  • LERU members are committed to Open Science as part of the 'new normal'.
  • Open access to research publications is the most advanced area, and can lead cultural change.
  • FAIR Data, Open Data, and the European Open Science Cloud remain challenging.
  • Citizen Science has its champions, but is not yet generally established.
  • More should be done on Open Science skills development.
  • Open Science ambassadors are being appointed across the LERU network.

The coronavirus pandemic has put Open Science centre stage, bringing home the need openly to share research data and publications so that effective therapies and vaccines can be developed at top speed. 

As Dr Ayris said in an interview with LERU:

The pandemic is a chance to show that Open Science practices, such as sharing the data from trials and investigations, make it possible to find successful treatments and develop successful vaccines quickly, for the benefit of society. So while the pandemic is an appalling threat, it's also an amazing opportunity to change research culture, so that we emerge from the pandemic stronger than when we went in.

In addition to this project, Dr Ayris is also promoting open models in education. He has echoed calls for an investigation into the commercial business models for e-books and supported UCL Press to investigate the construction of an open access platform for E-Textbooks, E-Lecture Notes and other forms of educational publishing. 

Find out more

Find out more about Open Science at UCL on the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship webpage.