Leadership – the key to Open Science success

‘Open Science, perhaps more properly termed Open Scholarship in English, represents a culture change in the way stakeholders in the research, education and knowledge exchange communities create, store, share and deliver the outputs of their activity.’[1] The purpose of this Statement is to identify how any university or research organization can take forward Open Science initiatives. It recognizes the significant challenges in doing so, but also that ‘Open Science brings new and exciting opportunities for the scholarly community and for how academics interact with society’. [2]

This Statement is based on the LERU Roadmap for Open Science. 'For universities and other stakeholders to embrace Open Science principles, policies and practices, there needs to be a culture change in these organizations if this transition is to be successfully negotiated.’ [3] With these words, the LERU Roadmap for Open Science, released in summer 2018, analyzes the transformative impact that Open Science will have on the European university system. It does so across eight areas of Open Science: the Future of Scholarly Publishing, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), FAIR data, Skills, Research Integrity, Rewards, the Responsible Use of Metrics, and Citizen Science.

At the occasion of the publication of the updated Plan S guidelines, LERU wants to underline the importance of the culture shift which is needed for the implementation of Open Science in universities, in particular with regard to Open Access publications. Plan S poses significant challenges for universities, not least in terms of managing costs. Without a fundamental change in the way publications are published, disseminated and paid for, the transition to Open Science in Europe will not happen.

Given the profound nature of the changes which Open Science will bring, what is needed in all universities is leadership. Leadership in Open Science is shared by all who wish to address Open Science principles and practices. It is up to each individual institution to determine the pace and character of that change. However, leaders everywhere need to do three things – to lead, manage and engage. Leadership comes first because, without this, there will be no progress. Leadership includes identifying a strategy which will deliver agreed objectives, and a willingness to embrace change – to see change as an opportunity, and not a threat. 

Alongside leadership comes management, because change needs to be managed, not just to happen. There are new resources to be identified, new roles to embed into the organization and new goals to be delivered. This does not just happen automatically, there needs to be an Open Science strategy which will identify all the challenges, describes the opportunities and benefits, and moves the institution from where it is now to where it wants to be.

The third area of activity is engagement. Everyone in the envisaged area of change needs to be engaged, to suggest developments and to be able to support the process. People will have different perceptions and different motivations. Change will not take root if it is simply imposed from the top. The recipe for success is to engage with different communities and to move forward together as equal partners with a shared vision.

Alongside these three Action lines – Leadership, Management, Engagement – come three enablers. These are Inspiration, Information and Integration. To move to new ways of thinking and doing, university members all need to be inspired to see the benefits of the change. They need to see change as an opportunity and not a threat. Securing this will be a sign of successful institutional leadership which works with all members of the organization.

Information relates to the transparency of a process. To engage with and work alongside the various communities, leaders need to be transparent and to share everything about the nature of the change and its projected outcome. Participants need to feel part of, indeed to own, the process. Not that the process is just being done to him or her and over which they have no control or ownership.

Success can then be measured by the level of engagement and contribution which all those involved in the process show when moving to changing their ways of thinking and doing. People who feel valued, and whose opinions count, are more likely to initiate and support change and to embrace it.

All stakeholders in the Open Science landscape need to play their part for it to succeed – researchers, educators, Professional Service staff, University leaders, research funding organizations, editors, publishers, and Learned Societies. One of the most significant challenges in introducing Open Science practices is managing the costs of the transition. In a publications system, for example, where costs fall on the originators of research rather than the readers, research-intensive universities will face significant costs. In constructing research data infrastructures, there are capital and recurrent costs in so doing. All stakeholders in the research landscape, particularly research funders and national funding bodies, should collaborate to identify their share of the costs of the transition to the new paradigm represented by Open Science. Universities may be able to save costs by collaborating over shared infrastructures and services. Managing costs is a key part of the leadership role which all universities need to adopt. Without a successful conclusion to the debate, a successful transition to Open Science will not be possible. 

Equally challenging is the change in the evaluation of excellence in an Open Science world. Traditional measures, such as the Journal Impact Factor, no longer pass muster when assessing individual research outputs because the JIF was not established to work in this way. LERU has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (https://sfdora.org) as a recognition that things are changing. The academic community, with other stakeholders, needs to agree how academic excellence in an Open Science environment is assessed. This is a particular challenge going forward.

Open Science has many benefits but it comes with costs. Additional funding is necessary for the implementation of Open Science in universities. LERU therefore advocates that where funding entities make Open Science a prerequisite for application, funding entities should also offer the financial means for it. Otherwise, the high costs of implementing Open Science will eventually lead to less research output. A similar challenge faces the academic community in terms of assessment and evaluation. In an Open Science world, the norms of evaluation have changed. Universities and research organizations, indeed all players in the scholarly communications landscape, need to work together to agree how academic excellence is assessed.

Open Science offers many benefits, but it also poses many challenges. It represents an emerging set of issues for leadership in the scholarly communications landscape, which LERU is committed to consider and to address in a way which will help dictate the future pattern of progress.

[1] LERU Open Science Roadmap: p. 3; last accessed 9 April 2019.
[2] Ibid., p. 22
[3] Ibid., p. 22

Contact

• Prof. Kurt Deketelaere, LERU Secretary-General, or +32 499 80 89 99
• Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services), University College London,
• Media contact: Bart Valkenaers, Policy Officer LERU, or +32 498 08 43 49