A new open access charter by Lero, the SFI research centre for software, aims to make all publicly funded research in Ireland available to everyone.
About two months ago, the US government announced an updated policy guidance on open access that is expected to substantially expand public access to taxpayer-funded science research across the world.
Now, there has also been movement in this space in Ireland with a new Open Science Charter launched by Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centre for software.
Launched at the University of Limerick today (21 October), the new charter aims to increase visibility for researchers, create more opportunities for collaboration and enable greater transparency in the research process.
Lero director Prof Brian Fitzgerald said that the centre is committed to realising Ireland’s goal of ensuring that “all scholarly publications resulting from publicly funded research are openly available”.
“Open science practices, which optimise access to research, are integral to Lero so we can collaborate and contribute, where research data, relevant software and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods,” he added.
The first such charter published by any SFI research centre, it has been formulated in line with the EU’s open science policy which identifies several ambitions in this space, including FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data) and open data sharing – a default approach at Lero for the results of EU-funded scientific research.
Ireland’s National Open Research Coordinator Dr Daniel Bangert, who launched the charter, called it “a welcome demonstration of leadership and commitment to open science and the principle of sharing research for the benefit of science and society”.
“It is well aligned with the international movement towards open science and national objectives developed by Ireland’s National Open Research Forum,” he said at the launch.
“Lero’s charter outlines centre-wide strategies and incentives for open science and these practical commitments will make a valuable contribution to the national agenda.”
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