Second French Plan for Open Science

«France is committed to ensuring that the results of scientific research are open to all, researchers, companies and citizens, without hindrance, without delay, without payment »

Open science refers to the unhindered dissmination of results, methods and products from scientific research. It draws on the opportunity  provided by recent digital progress to develop open access to publications and – as much as possible- data, source code and research methods.

Axe 1

Generalising open access to publications

The practice of providing open access to scientific publications should now be inescapable, wether this is done by initially publishing the text as open access or by placing it in an open public archive such as HAL. The aim set by the Research Programming Law is to achieve 100% open access publications by 2030.

«The scientific community should endeavour to build an ecosystem of open, ethical and transparent scientific publishing.»
Concrete measures
1
Generalise the obligation to publish in open access all articles and books resulting from the publicly funded calls for proposals.
2
Support open access economic publishing models that do not require the payment of articles or books processing charges (“diamond” model).
3
Encourage multilingualism and the circulation of scientific knowledge by translating publications by French researchers.
Axe 2

Structuring, sharing and opening up research data

Our aim is to ensure that the data produced by French public research is progressively structured to conform to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), safely preserved and, wherever possible, open to all.

«We will encourage practices that favor research data reuse.»
Concrete measures
4
Implement the obligation to disseminate publicly funded research data.
5
Create Recherche Data Gouv, the federated national plateform for research data.
6
Promote widespread adoption of data policies that cover the whole lifecycle of research data, to ensure that they arre Findable, Accessible, Interopable and Reusable (FAIR)
Axe 3

Opening up and promoting source code produced by research

Software plays a key role in scientific research, and it can be a tool, a result, and a research object. Making software source code available, with the option of modifying, reusing and disseminating them, is a major requirement to ensure the reproducibility of scientific findings and to support the creation and sharing of knowledge, in keeping with the open science ethos.

«The opening of software source codes is a major challenge for the reproducibility of scientific results.»
Concrete measures
7
Recognize and support the dissemination under an open source license of software produced by publicly funded research programmes.
8
Highlight the production of source code from higher education, research and innovation.
9
Define and promote an open software policy.
Axe 4

Transforming practices to make open science the default principle

Open science should become the default principle for researchers and it should constitute a criteria of excellence in research, as is now the case in the Horizon Europe Programme. For this, the higher education and research ecosystem must be transformed to align the incentives, strengthen capacity and increase recognition of the efforts made.

«Making open science practices sustainable requires changes in the evaluation system.»
Concrete measures
10
Develop and value open science skills throughout the educational and career pathways of students and research staff.
11
Value open science and the diversity of scientific productions in the assessment of researchers of projects and of universities and research performing organizations.
12
Triple the budget for the open science through the National Fund for Open Science and the Investments for the Future Program.
Open science refers to the unhindered dissemination of results, methods and products from scientific research. It draws on the opportunity provided by recent digital progress to develop open access to…