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2023 proved to be another landmark year for Science Europe: building on the achievements of the previous year and setting the direction for new approaches in vital areas of research policy.

Ahead of discussions on 4 July in the European Parliament, Science Europe highlights its concerns regarding the potential impact of the Digital Services Act on the research and education sectors and the legal uncertainty that it is likely to create.

Research organisations, libraries, repositories, and university networks call for the the exclusion of not-for-profit repositories, digital archives, and libraries from the obligations of the Digital Services Act.

On 27 January 2021, Science Europe presented the second, extended version of its Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management during a webinar with more than 260 participants.
As it was unfortunately not possible to address all questions participants asked during the launch event, this document presents the answers to the questions asked to both Science Europe and the webinar speakers.

This Practical Guide provides guidance to ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of research data. Three complementary maturity matrices provide funders, performers, and data infrastructures with a way to create a common understanding of the approaches needed.

The year 2020 saw a global pandemic attest to the value of science. In the race for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, Science Europe’s Member Organisations were at the forefront of the global response and our association became more relevant and important than ever.

Developed by experts from Science Europe Member Organisations, this guide aims to align research data management (RDM) requirements across research organisations. Originally released in 2019, it was updated in January 2021 to include guidance to support the evaluation of data management plans (DMPs).

In its response to the European Commission, Science Europe highlights that future EU legislation on AI needs to strike the right balance between safeguards for users and developers of AI systems, and a legal environment that fosters R&I.

In its response to the European Commission Roadmap for an upcoming legislative proposal on the governance of common European data spaces, Science Europe reinforces the need to consider sectoral policies to ensure coherence.

Science Europe calls on the European Commission to take into account the important role of the research sector as producer and user of data. The longstanding experience of the research sector should feed into the development of an overarching EU data strategy that promotes data access across sectors.

In its response to the EC consultation on the European Strategy for Data, Science Europe also underlines the need to consider sectoral policies to ensure coherence between overarching and sectoral policies.

Does your organisation want to develop requirements for data management plans (DMPs) or update existing ones?

Take a look at our latest publication to find out how to do so in three steps.

Research organisations and funders increasingly ask researchers to create Data Management Plans for their work and proposals. A lack of standardisation means that these can be time-consuming to create and difficult to compare and evaluate. Science Europe presents a framework for the creation of domain-specific protocols that can be used as standardised templates, reducing the administrative burden on both researchers, research organisations, and funders.

Science Europe welcomes the efforts made towards the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). In this open letter, the Governing Board of Science Europe reinforces its view that research data should be permanently, publicly, and freely available for re-use. The proposed EOSC aims to further this goal but a number of important questions still remain.

This open letter, signed by the European Research and Innovation community, calls on Members of the European Parliament and the Council to secure Europe’s leadership in the data economy by revising the Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception in the draft of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. It calls for the TDM exception to apply to any person that has legal access to the content to help the European data economy grow, foster innovation, and encourage entrepreneurship.

LIBER Europe, CESAER, EUA, LERU, and Science Europe — who together represent hundreds of universities, libraries, and research funding and performing organisations — call on Members of the European Parliament to modify the current EU copyright reform proposal. Amendments in five main areas of the proposal are critical if Europe wants to be at the forefront of a prosperous and growing digital society. Europe must take the lead to develop legislative frameworks that allow fair dissemination, access to, sharing and use of available knowledge.

Science Europe is working to enhance the interoperability of research information systems. This publication sets out common principles to guide their development.

Text and data mining (TDM) is hugely important for science as it can facilitate better research and the free flow of knowledge across borders. This report urges policy-makers to update the legal framework in the context of the upcoming EU copyright reform in order to allow TDM for commercial and non-commercial means, and also to clarify the legal position surrounding it.

This joint briefing paper with Knowledge Exchange informs the discussion on the funding of Research Data Management (RDM) and related infrastructures in Europe, helps raise awareness of the current challenges, and communicates opportunities for co-ordinated action to relevant stakeholders. The paper highlights that the funding of Research Data Infrastructures, enabling RDM, comes from a great variety of sources and institutions that have different responsibilities and that operate at local, national, and international levels.

Text and Data Mining (TDM) helps the analysis and extraction of new insights and knowledge from vast amount of digitally-available content. It offers great potential for research, but also for the economy and society as a whole since it enables innovation. This paper gives an overview of some of the legal hurdles faced by researchers using TDM practices, flags possible action lines for research organisations, and calls for a more science-friendly EU copyright law.

The Roadmap, approved by the Science Europe General Assembly in November 2013, is Science Europe’s action plan to contribute to the elements of a successful research system. It acts as a framework for voluntary collective activity, providing a long-term strategy for the association. The ‘Priority Action Areas’ are those in which Science Europe members believe that there is a potential to achieve tangible and substantive progress, and where they can add real value by working together.