Deliverable: Open Science policies and resource provisioning in the Nordic and Baltic countries (second report) is published
A new deliverable from the EOSC-Nordic Work Package on Legal Issues, Policies, and Sustainability is out! For the deliverable on Open Science policies and resource provisioning in the Nordic and Baltic countries (second report), we have surveyed and described policy and documentation such as written guidelines and policies relating to the policy implementation incentives for FAIR, policies for Open Science (OS) training/training for making data FAIR, policies for making other research objects FAIR, and policies facilitating cross-border research. The countries in the deliverable scope include Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden.
This deliverable is a follow-up of the first deliverable in the series regarding Open Science and resource provisioning. In the first deliverable, submitted in February 2020, we made the following observations regarding the maturity implementation of Open Science in the Nordic and Baltic region. They ranged from countries with laws governing the implementation of Open Science to countries being in the early stages of adopting national strategies and plans. The study showed that in countries where a national Open Science policy has not been established, some higher education institutions (HEI) and funders have established Open Access policies and, to a lesser extent, Open Data policies.
Countries have taken different approaches when it comes to policy implementation incentives for FAIR. Policy implementation incentives are either in the form of national policies or laws. Various organizations may author policies, including organisations with national mandates, such as funders, and organisations with a subnational mandate, such as Higher Education Institutions.
Policies for open science training/training for making data FAIR or OS training policies are available in some countries. In countries where neither policies nor training is available, there is still an awareness of the importance of policies for OS training/training for making data FAIR, which is reflected in some of the draft policies. HEIs provide OS training in a majority of countries inventoried. A difference between the countries inventoried is that in some countries, the policy is set at a national level; in others, policies are established in addition to, or only at, the subnational level.
Most countries inventoried do not have policies in place for making other research objects FAIR. This fact has also been highlighted in other reports. We find that making other research objects FAIR is an area needing focus to ensure transparency, reproducibility, and reusability of research.
Of the inventoried countries, one has a policy that mentions the facilitation of cross-border research in the sense that national e-infrastructure is promoted to international users. The remainder of the countries has national policies regarding access to resources, which focuses on researchers with national affiliation access to services. We find that policies in the Nordics and Baltics do not focus on cross-border research facilitation but instead have a national scope.