LERU: Roadmap towards Open Access

This roadmap reflects LERU’s (League of European Research Universities) decision to explore new models of scholarly and scientific communication and to disseminate the research outputs arising from LERU member universities, with a particular emphasis on Open Access as the preferred route.

Its aim is to support LERU universities seeking to implement Open Access policies, practices, and infrastructures, while also serving as a useful roadmap for other universities.

Led by the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a network of 23 research universities (e.g., Amsterdam, Barcelona, Cambridge, Copenhagen, Oxford, Sorbonne, Zurich), coordinated from its office in Leuven. Implementation is structured through the Open Science Ambassadors, appointed by each university and connected with LERU’s policy groups. In Open Access, the Roadmap was developed by the LERU Open Access Working Group (with participation from LIBER, Jisc, and SPARC Europe) and aligned with European policies (European Commission, ERC, OpenAIRE).

• Accelerate the transition to Open Science in research-intensive universities, embedding it as the “new normal” and prioritizing action areas according to institutional needs.
• Analyze challenges and opportunities across the eight pillars (open publications, FAIR data and EOSC, skills, integrity, rewards and incentives, next-generation metrics, citizen science), and propose concrete lines of action for each.
• Establish governance and leadership structures (e.g., a network of Open Science Ambassadors), together with culture-change and internal communication programs, to drive implementation at institutional and disciplinary levels.
• Advance Open Access via green and gold routes, promoting institutional repositories, deposit mandates, publication funds, and agreements with publishers.
• Strengthen the management and openness of research data (FAIR), its interoperability, and its linkage with European initiatives such as EOSC, while aligning with legal frameworks for copyright and reuse.
• Reform evaluation and recognition systems to align rewards and indicators with responsible practices (DORA, Leiden Manifesto) and with diverse research contributions.
• Consolidate scientific integrity and transparency throughout the research cycle, and strengthen societal participation through citizen science.

Researchers, scientific and research groups, repository managers, and the general public.

The publication of the LERU Roadmap towards Open Access in 2011 marked the beginning of an ongoing process of recommendations and implementation across member universities.

In 2018, LERU published “Open Science and its role in universities: A Roadmap for Cultural Change”, which broadened the scope from open access to the eight pillars of Open Science defined by the European Commission: scholarly communication, FAIR data, EOSC, education and skills, rewards and incentives, next-generation metrics, research integrity, and citizen science. The document put forward 41 recommendations addressed to member universities and included guiding questions for each institution to assess its own progress.

To put these recommendations into practice, in 2019 the Ad Hoc Group on the Implementation of the Open Science Roadmap was established. Its work culminated in 2021 with the note “Implementing Open Science”: a pillar-by-pillar analysis with concrete lines of action and a SWOT assessment of the Open Science landscape in European universities.

As a direct outcome, in 2021 the network of Open Science Ambassadors was created, with a designated representative at each of the 22 member universities. Their role is to provide institutional leadership in the adoption of Open Science, act as a trusted adviser to the academic community, and coordinate joint actions through four thematic working groups.

In practical implementation, a key challenge is the deposit of articles and research data when multiple repositories are available, and how to interconnect those repositories to avoid duplication or additional effort for deposit.

At the institutional level, LERU identifies cultural change as one of the major challenges in adopting Open Science solutions, a gradual process considered vital for the transition to open science, particularly with respect to sharing research data.

LERU’s proposed and implemented actions drive culture change from within institutions as a key lever for the shift to open science. They set concrete objectives and clear, specific actions to achieve it.

The Working Group on Implementing LERU’s Open Science Roadmap is reviewing the eight pillars of Open Science proposed by the European Commission (FAIR data, research integrity, next-generation metrics, scholarly communication, citizen science, education and skills, rewards and incentives, and the European Open Science Cloud), tailored to the European university context. For this reason, they propose the role of an Open Science Ambassador to lead the necessary actions and changes at the local level.

LERU has committed to becoming an observer in the new EOSC Association (European Open Science Cloud), in order to help guide the future development of this ambitious project.

• LERU roadmap towards open access: https://www.leru.org/files/The-LERU-Roadmap-Towards-Open-Access-Full-paper.pdf
• Implementing Open Science: https://www.leru.org/files/Implementing-open-science.pdf