Open science policies aim to ensure the unimpeded dissemination of the results, methods and outputs of scientific research. One of the main instruments now being mobilized in the service of “open science” is open access, which, according to a variety of methods, to make scientific publications freely available on the Internet and to facilitate their exploitation, particularly for research purposes.
Article L. 533-4 of the Research Code, issued by the law of 7 October 2016 for a Digital Republic, thus guarantees the right of researchers to deposit in digital form their mostly publicly funded articles in an open archive on the expiry of a period from the date of the first publication (six months for a publication
in the fields of science, technology and medicine and 12 months in the humanities and social sciences).
The setting up of embargo periods is the result of a compromise between, on the one hand, taking into account the economic model of the publishing activity, by leaving to the publishers an exclusive exploitation time of their publications, and, on the other hand, the objective of the widest possible dissemination of knowledge.
The law also preserves the copyright of researchers since it does not require them to make their writings available at the expiry of the embargo periods but merely guarantees them the right to do so.
Beyond this legislative framework, reflections have been made to further develop the openness of science. The «plan S» adopted at the European level by the cOAlitionS, which brings together research funding bodies, promotes a «strategy of non assignment of rights».
The conclusions of the Council of the European Union on the evaluation of research and the implementation of open science of 10 June 2022 consider that “Authors of research publications or their institutions should retain sufficient intellectual property rights to ensure open access to such publications.”
The Book Ombudsman also released a draft opinion on scientific publishing on 11 March 2022, in which he reports on the delicate balances to be achieved in the context of open science policy, including in relation to rights assignment issues.
Moreover, research organizations are increasingly, in practice, evaluating scientists attached to them, taking into account their propensity to publish natively in open access publications and not to assign their rights, which is not free of litigation risk.
In this context, Olivier Japiot, President of the Conseil supérieur de la propriété littéraire et artistique (CSPLA), entrusted to Maxime Boutron, master of requests to the Council of State, a mission to examine the implementation of the current legislative and regulatory framework in the light of the essential objective of striking a balance between the wide dissemination of work in the field of science and the vitality of scientific publishing. The mission will then analyse the proposals for the evolution of this framework that are currently being put forward, in France or at the level of the European Union, and assess their stakes in terms of literary and artistic ownership, and in particular as regards the possibility for research authors to master the form in which their publications are made available.
This mission will be conducted in collaboration with Alexandre Trémolière, master of requests to the Council of State.
The mission will report its findings by the end of 2023.
CSPLA Open Science Mission
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