[Open-science-nl] What Open Science metrics should the European Union use?

Sun Jul 8 11:21:58 UTC 2018

Hi Egon, all,

Thanks - and in an attempt to be as precise as possible: Elsevier is not currently the only dataprovider, but it is the only subcontractor and a number of the current indicators are based solely on Elsevier data. in addition, it is unclear what the role of Elsevier is in the monitor: solely as dataprovider, or also e.g. consulting on the selection and operationalization of indicators. That lack of transparancy in the process leading to the awarding of the subcontract is another issue addressed in the complaint to the EU Ombudsperson.

One of the dangers I personally see is that if the EU OS monitor is (also) going to be used as a benchmark of sorts by other organizations looking to monitor OS*, the results of a biased selection of indicators will propagate (and in the current setup, Elsevier will have an unfair advantage as they stand to financially benefit from that).

So while I would certainly appreciate organizational support for the current questions raised regarding the procedure in establishing the OS monitor and the results thereof, I think it's perhaps even more important for the organizations Egon mentioned to commit *themselves* to a fair and balanced way of assessing Open Science...

As to practical approaches, one way could be to bring this to the attention of the NPOS themegroup 3 on evaluation & assessment, through its chairperson Melle de Vries from KNAW (or all members).

kind regards,
Bianca

* made more poignant by the proposal in the Impact Assessment for Horizon Europe for an 'Open Science label" for universities (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/swd_2018_307_f1_impact_assesment_en_v6_p2_977548.pdf#page=107).

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Bianca Kramer, PhD | Subject Specialist Life Sciences and Medicine | Utrecht University Library | Heidelberglaan 3 Utrecht NL-3584 CS | www.uu.nl/library<https://www.uu.nl/en/university-library> | b.m.r.kramer at uu.nl<mailto:b.m.r.kramer at uu.nl> | room G.01.503 UMC Utrecht | working days Thu-Fri | Twitter: @MsPhelps<http://twitter.com/@MsPhelps>
________________________________
From: Open-science-nl [open-science-nl-bounces at lists.okfn.org] on behalf of Egon Willighagen [egon.willighagen at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2018 2:54 PM
To: open-science-nl at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [Open-science-nl] What Open Science metrics should the European Union use?

Hi all,

this was a crazy week... (what can we expect from a hot summer...)

- EU copyright law is back to the drawing table (fortunately)
- Elsevier introduced the term "100% OA-Ready" (which they claim they are [0])
- the NPlatformOS page [1] is not remove from Wikipedia-NL yet (*)

*) But we must really use the term "National Platform Open Science" in our communication more.

And, of course a discussion about the participation of Elsevier as (currently) sole data provider of Open Science metrics [2,3,4], leading to an official complain to the European Ombudsman [5]. The replies from Elsevier [3] and the consortium coordinator [4] do not bode well, but there is the public consultation page [6], where we leave our expectations (until August 31).

I left some initial comment myself. The biggest problem with the current consultation is that it is very narrow (mostly on Open Access and much less on other Open Science aspects, like open source and open data), focused on altmetrics provided by Elsevier. But there are some serious issues with having only one provider (either Elsevier or Altmetric.com): data is biased.

That said, and to make this very clear, I think the Leiden CWTS has all it takes to do this right, but they need to right input to their consultation. We cannot afford not having an important metric missing, just because we did not bring it up. Note, that where important here is basically anything, as part of the consortium's effort will be to determine how metrics complement each other: basically, any metric is important, until we have prove there are unimportant metrics (like the JIF) and then we should not be using those. Negative data is at least as important as positive data, as we can expect these metrics to be used to be used in tenure track decisions.

BTW, I also strongly feel that their definition of Open Science and Open Access is dangerously ill-defined (as common in EU policy documents).. they tend to not define "reuse" as essential part of the Open Science field, instead of focus on an ill-defined "free"... with deeply worrying claims as a result [0]. Reuse requires the (near) unconditional rights to 1. modify and 2. redistribute.

I think it is essential that:

- the NPOS working group on metrics issues an official statement (and link to that in [5])
- researcher interest groups (postdoc platforms, KNAW, etc, etc) issue official statements
- NWO should issue a reply as funder

Any ideas on how to get this happening?

Greetings,

Egon

PS. the complaint to the ombudsman was submitted with more than 200 people signed, but the current count is 699 [7].

0.https://twitter.com/gemmahersh/status/1014740678105075712
1.https://nl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nationaal_Platform_Open_Science
2.https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2018/jun/29/elsevier-are-corrupting-open-science-in-europe?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience
3.https://zenodo.org/record/1305847
4.https://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-serves-the-global-research-community-to-deliver-open-science
5.https://lisboncouncil.net/press-room/781-press-release-statement-from-lisbon-council-president-paul-hofheinz-open-science-the-open-science-monitor-and-the-open-science-monitoring-trends-and-drivers-project.html
6.https://www.makingspeechestalk.com/ch/Open_Science_Monitor/
7.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WQAFUebPx5TNvgUKuIaUFPa80cdBuJhDbhwlh15EHz0/edit#

--
E.L. Willighagen
Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT
Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/)
Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
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ORCID: 0000-0001-7542-0286<http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286>
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