Criteria for the eligibility of projects for funding by the National Fund for Open Science
A number of criteria, qualified as exemplarity criteria, have been defined by the Committee for Open Science. They will be used to guide the choice of investments to be made in scientific publishing and more particularly in platforms, infrastructures and editorial content. Candidate projects will have to correspond to these characteristic criteria.
France’s ambitions in the field of scientific publishing were set out in the national plan for open science. This plan states that the scientific community must regain control of the editorial system and focus its efforts on virtuous actors in an open and ethical environment.
There are 44 criteria, divided according to the different themes involved.
For the way platforms and infrastructures function , these are:
- governance,
- transparency,
- viability/sustainability
- replicability/portability.
And for editorial contents they are:
- governance/integrity/editorial policy,
- the legal framework,
- the business model in general,
- the business model/specific cases of journals and collections with unit-based payment of publication costs,
- accessibility/interoperability/ content sustainability.
They have been classified on three levels: essential , highly recommended and desired.
Those labelled “essential” are mandatory criteria.
These exemplarity criteria were approved on April 17th 2019 at the first meeting of the Steering Committee for Open Science. The committee was set up as part of the national plan and is the operational body dedicated to the implementation of the policy of support for giving open access to publications and research data defined in the national plan. “Defining the principles and guidelines for the allocation and use of funding to the National Fund for Open Science provided for in the plan, and determining its expenditure and income” is one of its missions.
The criteria will be updated regularly to take into account the experience acquired and the evolution of the state of the art situation.
The text was translated by Richard Dickinson – Translation Unit, Inist-CNRS.
