The European Commission describes Open Science as “the sharing of knowledge, data and tools as early as possible in the Research and Innovation (R&I) process, in open collaboration with all relevant knowledge actors, including academia, industry, public authorities, end users, citizens and society at large.”

As also found in the Spanish National Strategy for Open Science (ENCA), the concept of open science refers to open access to research outputs (publications, data, protocols, code, methodologies, software, etc.), the use of digital platforms based on open-source code, and the opening up of the entire scientific process, as much and as soon as possible, including practices such as open peer review, open educational resources, promotion of citizen science, and the development of new ways of research performance assessment. 

Figure 1. Elements comprising Open Science. Source: Estrategia Nacional de Ciencia Abierta 2023-2027 (ENCA).

The European Commission supports open access, specifically in its funding programmes and defines it as: “Open Access is the practice of providing online access to scientific information that is free of charge to the user and is reusable”.

There are different definitions for Research Data, for instance in the Spanish National Strategy for Open Science (ENCA) the following text is provided:

“Research data refers to any material that has been generated, collected, observed, or recorded during the lifecycle of a research project and serves as evidence of the research process. It is recognized by the scientific community and is used to validate research results and ensure their reproducibility. Access to data and other relevant digital objects for research, such as software, is essential for the reproducibility of scientific findings.  It facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration, stimulates economic growth through better opportunities for innovation, enables data reuse in social innovation, improves resource efficiency, enhances transparency, accountability, and the performance of public investment, fosters scientific research, ensures public support for research funding, and strengthens public trust in research (OECD 2021)”.

Open research data  refers to the data underpinning scientific research results that can be feely used, reused and distributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to credit the curator and share under the same license.

Benefits of Open Science include “opening up the research system between scientists and between disciplines,  as well as towards society as a whole. Open Science facilitates sharing and collaboration, thereby accelerating the discovery process, improving research quality, and making science more impactful and central to human and societal development”.

Figure 2. Summary of the benefits of Open Science. European Commission.

The FAIR guiding principles  are a series of guidelines and good practices to guarantee that data, or other digital objects, are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable to ensure their transparency and reproducibility.

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a document that describes the data management life cycle of the data to be collected, processed and/or generated by a project, being a key element of good data management. As part of making research data findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable (FAIR), a DMP should include information on:

> the handling of research data during & after the end of the project

> what data will be collected, processed and/or generated

> which methodology & standards will be applied

> whether data will be shared/made open access and

> how data will be curated & preserved (including after the end of the project)