National Programme Open Science (NPOS)

Summary

The National Programme Open Science (NPOS) brings together the main stakeholders at the national level in the Netherlands with the aim of coordinating the transition to open science and raising awareness of its importance.

The Programme sets out the ambitions and identifies the stakeholders who are committed to taking action, as well as the timeframe in which they intend to achieve their goals.

The Programme focuses on three main lines of action:

Achieving full open access publishing.
Ensuring the optimal reuse of research data.
Adapting evaluation and reward systems to align with the goals of open science.

Promoting organizations

The National Platform Open Science (NPOS) is a Dutch alliance led by the universities (VSNU/UNL), the Royal Academy (KNAW), the Research Council (NWO), and the National Library (KB), among others, to implement the National Plan Open Science. In 2017 these organizations—together with ZonMw and the Vereniging Hogescholen—presented the plan and signed the Open Science Declaration. Since 2019, the initiative has been structured as the National Programme Open Science, coordinated with funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and the universities.

Objectives

The National Programme Open Science aims to harness the opportunities arising from information and communication technologies and globalization, which have facilitated the exchange of scientific research results as well as scientific methods and practices.

The Programme outlines what the stakeholders are already doing now and what they plan to do in the future to seize these opportunities while making science even more accessible to others.

The main objectives of the National Programme Open Science are:

To achieve full open access to publications by 2020.
To establish clear and agreed technical and policy conditions that facilitate the reuse of research data, including the provision of the necessary expertise and support.
To examine how open science can become a component of the evaluation and reward system for researchers, research groups, and research proposals.
To establish an “information exchange center” covering all available research funding opportunities.

Beneficiaries and stakeholders

The main stakeholders of the programme are:

The business community: high-tech companies with significant R&D departments.
Government bodies responsible for policy and funding.
University researchers.
Educational and research institutions and libraries.
Support organizations and scientific platforms.

Moreover, open publication of results accelerates the development of knowledge. In the specific case of companies, open science enhances innovation capacity, while society as a whole benefits from easy access to scientific information and the ability to use it.

Results

At present, the stakeholders are carrying out initiatives related to the research planning phase, among which the following stand out:

DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services): provides information and support for preparing data management plans for projects, including those under “Horizon 2020.” The center also provides access to research data and a research data management system.
University libraries: provide advice, guidance, and support to their own university researchers in the field of data management.
eScience Center: supports researchers in data management, funds research projects, provides a software and knowledge platform, and offers training in the use of open science tools.
Coalition formed by VSNU (Association of Dutch Universities), KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), SURF, and NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research):* is exploring the possibilities of a system that allows uniform recording and exchange of research information.
ZonMw: works on policy and provides support to researchers to enable collaboration in research data infrastructures.
DTL (Digital Life Sciences): is studying how to produce data as compactly as possible and make it machine-readable, as well as how to support that process.
SURF: is running an open science innovation programme, focusing particularly on the optimal use of computing, data, and network services, and supporting the reuse of research data, linked to the international context of EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) and the FAIR data principles.
LCRDM (National Coordination Point Research Data Management): since 2015 has facilitated the efficient and effective development and implementation of research data management policy in the Netherlands.
101 Innovations in Scholarly Communication: an initiative originating at Utrecht University Library. It has created a list of tools available for open science.

* SURF: collaborative organization for ICT in Dutch education and research.

Other initiatives have been developed to support research activities, such as:

NFU (Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres): has created a shared data infrastructure for biomedical research.
SURF: as one of the partners in the EOSC pilot project, works on the establishment of an international cyberinfrastructure consistent with the needs of international research.
eScience Technology Platform: ensures that the entire scientific community has public access, on an open and fully documented basis, to research data from all projects involving Dutch universities.
UKB: is examining what data policies are needed and what data principles should be applied for open science.

With regard to research results, different initiatives have been launched, including:

VSNU: negotiating with major publishers to ensure direct open access to publications.
CLARIAH: a research infrastructure available for the Humanities.
Health-RI initiative: a national open platform aimed at connecting and developing existing infrastructures (biobanks, population cohorts, data collections) to support and foster interdisciplinary research in the field of medicine and personalized health.

Training courses and technical tools have also been designed to provide support and enable online collaboration and information exchange:

Essentials 4 Data Support: a course for research support staff.
SURF: offers training courses and advice to link institutional-level research support with the support provided by SURF.
eScience Center: offers training courses such as “data architecture” and “software architecture,” fully focused on open science and open source.

The Programme also considers the need for an evaluation methodology, currently being developed through the following initiatives:

SEP (Strategy Evaluation Protocol): methodology used to evaluate institutes, institutions, and universities. It describes how the evaluation is conducted and the responsibilities of the different parties. It also proposes indicators such as “Availability of data management plans” and “Publication of raw data or availability of data for external use.”
BKO (Protocol for Quality Assurance of Research in Higher Professional Education): aimed at universities of applied sciences. It contains open science elements as well as other criteria to support institutional choices.
DANS, in collaboration with DTL, is developing a system to evaluate research data according to the FAIR principles in order to support general research evaluation systems.

The creation of the National Platform Open Science is intended to demonstrate the joint and coordinated commitment of stakeholders to open science and to promote its importance.

The Platform serves as a space to share knowledge and experiences, as well as to build connections. In particular, it aims to accelerate the three key areas of the Programme.

Challenges

Five main challenges can be identified:*

Lack of expertise in open science: universities are funding their own data stewards, but the growth in the number of data stewards is not fast enough.
Improved coordination among the various stakeholders.
Lack of standards: the development of the FAIR data principles requires leadership, debate, and research protocols.
Although progress has been made in terms of open access, there is still a long way to go: compared with the 2015–2017 period, there has been slower growth in open access. In particular, there is concern about current and future negotiations that will largely determine the success of achieving full open access.
Need to raise awareness: there are noticeable differences among scientific disciplines in terms of knowledge and awareness of open science developments.

* Information extracted from the report “Transition costs for open science in the Netherlands.”

Evidence of success

The Programme has been under implementation since 2017 and, although one of its ambitions was to achieve full open access by the end of the 2017–2020 period, other ambitions related to the key areas of open science are foreseen in the longer term, aligning with the completion of the Programme in 2030.

In December 2021, an open consultation was launched to give all stakeholders the opportunity to reflect on the national ambition regarding open science.

Although the initiative originated in the Netherlands, the National Programme Open Science can serve as an inspiration for other European countries seeking to connect different national open science initiatives and coordinate the stakeholders providing information and support to researchers.