Elsevier and the Dutch Open Science goals - Leiden Madtrics

The VSNU, NFU, NWO and Elsevier have announced a national deal that bundles Open Access and data services. Is the deal consistent with Dutch Open Science goals, and will undesirable platform effects be avoided?

Yesterday it was announced that the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Elsevier have reached a national deal that includes Open Access publishing and reading services. The deal had been long in the making, and the road was bumpy. An important feature of the deal is that it moves beyond Open Access: it is also an agreement about the joint development of new research intelligence services. The bundling of Open Access and data services was formally announced in December, but the news leaked a month earlier. The contract with Elsevier has been made publicly available, except for the financial agreements made.

Because of this link between access and research intelligence services, the VSNU, NFU and NWO installed an expert Taskforce at the beginning of 2020 to “address issues around the responsible use of research information and the role of commercial third-party providers in particular.” I am a member of the Taskforce. The relevance of the Taskforce is explained in our assignment:

“There is an emerging market for third party providers offering services to satisfy the growing demand for research information and evaluation. Using large scale data collection, aggregation and analysis, these services provide new prospects for assisted decision making on, for example: - funding opportunities, - publishing venues, - identifying upcoming research fields, - alternative metrics. As critical functions of the scholarly enterprise become increasingly dependent on such services, it is critical that the academy itself carefully considers risks involved in becoming too dependent on specific market players and their tightly integrated solutions. The increasing interwovenness of information about research (research intelligence) and research itself raises a number of challenging issues both for users and for producers of this information.”

Two important aims of the Taskforce are to:

• Establish a set of terms and conditions under which metadata of public research output can be (re)used and enriched by public and private organizations, in accordance with research ethics and public values and avoiding undesired network or platform effects
• Describe the concept of an Open Knowledge Base (OKB), in which an open infrastructure is developed in cooperation with private parties for the responsible management of research information and data, consistent with Dutch Open Science goals

An open consultation is currently underway on the Guiding Principles the Taskforce formulated for collaboration between Dutch research institutions and third-party organizations in developing new services based on (meta)data use. We have formulated principles on 1) Ownership of (meta)data; 2) Enduring access; 3) Trusted and transparent provenance; 4) Interoperability as part of community owned governance; 5) Open collaboration with the market; and 6) Community owned governance. These principles have also been offered to the steering committee of VSNU, NFU and NWO, who were responsible for the negotiations with Elsevier.