Prof. Johan Rooryck has, in recent days been appointed the Open Access Champion for cOAlition S and brings a great level of expertise and experience to this role. The announcement of his appointment came just a day before Jean-Claude Burgelman, the new Open Access Envoy at the European Commission joined the cOAlition S Executive Steering Group and the World Health Organisation joined the coalition of funders and organisations that have singed up to Plan S and in doing so becoming the first United Nations agency to do so.
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
On September 2nd, Utrecht University announced that they have now signed up to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment in a broader move towards fully embracing open scholarship. You can read more about their motivations and intentions here: https://www.uu.nl/en/news/utrecht-university-signs-san-francisco-declaration-on-research-assessment
Elsewhere Cambridge University and the University of Edinburgh have also joined the growing number of Higher Education Institution's signing up to DORA. You can read Edinburgh's Statement on the Responsible Use of Research Metrics here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/responsible_research_metrics_statement.pdf
National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment
Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan T.D. launched the National Framework that will guide Ireland's collective approach to Open Scholarship in July 2020. The Framework is the outcome of a consultation process driven by the National Open Research Forum (NORF) in 2018-19 and attention now turns nationally to Implementing the Framework. Read more about this, and NORF here: http://norf-ireland.net/
On April 8th 2019, at an event organised by UNESCO at the WSIS Forum 2019 in Geneva, coordinators of six platforms – AmeliCA(link is external), AJOL(link is external), Érudit(link is external), J-STAGE(link is external), OpenEdition(link is external), and SciELO(link is external)network agreed to join forces to democratize scientific knowledge following a multicultural, multi-thematic and multi-lingual approach. The Global Alliance of Open Access Scholarly Communication Platforms (GLOALL) was launched with a recognition of the principle that scientific and scholarly knowledge is a global public good essential for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The session directly addressed WSIS action line C3 on Access to Information and Knowledge and action line C7 on E-Science. In addition to fostering democratization of knowledge generated in all places, subjects and languages, the GLOALL carries a vision to promote the development of multilingual scholarly communication standards, products and services. The alliance seeks to enhance operational and subject interoperability in order to strengthen engagement with research worldwide. Read more about it here: https://en.unesco.org/news/launch-global-alliance-open-access-scholarly-communication-platforms-democratize-knowledge
