October 25, 2017. – In conjunction with Open Access Week (October 23-29, 2017), the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) wishes to express its support for the recommendations relating to open science made by the G7 Science Ministers in their recent Communiqué (dated September 28, 2017).
Following their meetings in Turin, Italy, the representatives from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, as well as the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, were categorical in their support for a move towards open science, calling for international collaboration to facilitate a rapid transition to an Open Science Paradigm. Specifically, the Ministers identified two key areas for action, and charged their Open Science Working Group with pursuing these: ensuring that evaluations of researchers’ success recognize and reward open science activities, and enabling a widespread culture of research data management wherein the deposit, sharing, and reuse of research data would be the norm, on a global scale.
Earlier this year, CARL published a Scholarly Communication Roadmap, which identified tangible steps towards an open, sustainable, effective, and innovative scholarly communication system – one that is deeply rooted in open science. We are pleased to see how clearly our Roadmap and its resulting initiatives align with the areas of action identified by the G7 Science Ministers. As well, CARL’s Portage initiative, focused on research data, has been collaborating with other key organizations in Canada since 2015 to establish expertise within academic institutions related to research data management, best practices for collecting and preserving data, and infrastructure for research data management at the national level. CARL therefore welcomes the Ministers’ commitment to ensuring standards and adoption of open research data.
We look forward to hearing how Minister Duncan will advance the Ministers’ stated priorities in Canada. Certainly, there is room to build on the success of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy for Publications, to develop new initiatives and incentives to ensure a large-scale move towards open science, and to foster culture change and build supportive infrastructure for the efficient and effective management of open science research. Research libraries seek to play a continued—indeed, strengthened—role in Canada’s open science endeavours.
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CARL members include Canada’s twenty-nine largest university libraries as well as two national libraries. Enhancing research and higher education are at the heart of its mission. CARL develops the capacity to support this mission, promotes effective and sustainable scholarly communication, and public policy that enables broad access to scholarly information.
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