Representatives from prominent research funders, including the European Research Council (ERC), Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO), Volkswagen Foundation, and FIIBAP, gathered earlier this spring for a research funders discussion forum hosted by Frontiers. The forum aimed to explore the challenges and opportunities involved in supporting and incentivizing open science.
During the forum, the funders shared their policies and approaches to open science, highlighting open access publishing and open research data as priority issues. However, they acknowledged that it can be challenging to focus on various elements of open science simultaneously.
The participants identified equity and cost as challenges that all open science actors should contribute to solving, particularly larger funders. While larger funders can provide generous resources for research, they often attach complex requirements to their grants, making it challenging for researchers to comply with these requirements. Smaller funders, on the other hand, face challenges in providing adequate, secure funding to enable grantees to allocate funds for publishing services.
To better support the research process, funders suggested that publishers provide more comprehensive guidance and quality metadata. They also suggested that publishers could reduce the administrative burden on researchers by centralizing processes, such as institutional agreements with funders, the automatic addition of publications to trusted repositories, and the reduction of paperwork.
The participants emphasized the importance of ongoing exchange of information between funders and finding common approaches to supporting and incentivizing open science. Frontiers, as an open access publisher committed to making all science open, is dedicated to building relationships with research funders to accelerate the transition to open science. As part of this commitment, Frontiers provides fair, high-quality, and tailored solutions to funders who want to enter an institutional partnership with them.
Overall, the funders' discussion forum provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities involved in supporting and incentivizing open science. Funders and publishers must work together to prioritize open access and data sharing and reduce the administrative burden on researchers to make open science a reality.
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