HELIOS Open Advisory Council Applauds Barcelona Declaration on Research Information
The Barcelona Declaration on Research Information, released April 16, 2024, calls for the “openness of information about the conduct and communication of research,” and asserts that this openness should be the norm. The signatories of the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information commit to taking a lead in transforming the way research information is used and produced. Signatories include funders and higher education institutions including the Gates Foundation and the Coimbra Group, which represents 40 European universities. [Click for a full list of signatories.]
The Declaration identifies a core contradiction in the research ecosystem:
“...a large share of all research information is locked inside proprietary infrastructures. It is managed by companies that are accountable primarily to their shareholders, not to the research community. As a research community, we have become strongly reliant on closed infrastructures. We have ended up assessing researchers and institutions based on non-transparent evidence. We are monitoring and incentivizing open science using closed data. We are also routinely making decisions based on information that is biased against less privileged languages, geographical regions, and research agendas. To advance responsible research assessment and open science and to promote unbiased high-quality decision making, there is an urgent need to make research information openly available through open scholarly infrastructures. Openness of research information must be the new norm.”
The HELIOS Open Member Advisory Committee applauds the Barcelona Declaration’s organizers and commitment to transparency and openness of research information. Open research information is a human and global endeavor, sometimes contained within national contexts and frameworks. Global open scholarship efforts can inform and enhance one another.
Below, we articulate ways in which the work of our 103 members, comprising major research-producing institutions across the United States, mirrors opportunities presented in the declaration, in order to help our members find their own points of alignment.
1. Make openness the default for the research information used and produced
We welcome the Barcelona Declaration’s core objective to ensure that openness is the norm for the research information we use and produce, for instance to assess researchers and institutions, to support strategic decision making, and to find relevant research outputs.
In our work to advance open scholarship incentives across over 100 HELIOS Open campuses, we advocate for academic institutions to explicitly account for openness within researcher and institution evaluations and infrastructure. In January 2024, we gathered at Florida International University at a NASA-funded workshop with over 50 presidents, provosts, and vice presidents for research and faculty to discuss how we can update our hiring, tenure, promotion, and review policies to explicitly reward open science and scholarship. We note the declaration’s push to ensure assessment and evaluation is built on open and transparent data and will support HELIOS Open leaders taking action to modernize research evaluation with this in mind.
*Open research information advances the goals underlying HELIOS Open’s efforts to modernize research assessment. Given the increasing use of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) across research activities, it is now much easier for vendors to convert institutional data (such as faculty activity reports) into research information that can then be monetized in ways that may not align with the best interests of faculty or institutions themselves. Making open research information central to evaluation can mitigate emerging types of institutional risk.
2. Work with services and systems that support and enable open research information
The Barcelona Declaration requires that for external and internal publishing systems and platforms 1) research information generated in publication processes (e.g., metadata of research articles and other outputs) be made openly available through open scholarly infrastructures 2) relevant research information can be exported and made open. This process should use standard protocols and identifiers where available.
Campuses across the United States are working hard to prepare for implementation of new federal public access policies that require all federally funded papers and associated data to be made immediately available upon publication. The guidance calls for agencies to share publication metadata, including funding information, and to require the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs).
*This federal policy can serve as a catalyst for institutions to develop policies regarding PIDs and open research information, regardless of whether scholarship is federally funded or not. HELIOS Open can support campuses in considering which infrastructure to adopt and what internal policies to create that advance the use of open research information.
3. Support the sustainability of infrastructures for open research information
The Barcelona Declaration advocates for good practices in community building and community governance, including providing fair and equitable contributions to the financial stability and development of research information infrastructures.
HELIOS Open’s Shared Open Infrastructure Working Group developed the “Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Guide: Buy, Build, or Partner” to support college and university leadership in making informed infrastructure decisions. The working group affirmed UNESCO’s vision that "Open science infrastructures should be organized and financed on a primarily not-for-profit and long-term vision, which enhance open science practices and guarantee permanent and unrestricted access to all, to the largest extent possible." In refining the key decision-making considerations, the group included governance as a key factor to support transparency and facilitate examination and prioritization of sustainable operations and community input.
*As research information infrastructure is extremely costly for campuses (in terms of time, money, and morale), campuses should carefully consider the alignment of their interests with those of research information system providers—and take proactive steps where necessary to ensure this alignment.
4. Support collective action to accelerate the transition to openness of research information
The Barcelona Declaration highlights the importance of sharing experiences and coordinating action to promote a system-wide transition from closed to open research information. Collective action is at the heart of HELIOS Open’s approach to supporting change among our 103 campus members.
*We will surface opportunities for our members to learn from and contribute to these emerging efforts to make open research information the default, including engagement with relevant organizations, such as the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS), and the Barcelona Declaration’s emerging joint roadmap for open research information (see https://barcelona-declaration.org/conference/).
The HELIOS Open Member Advisory Council urges campuses to ensure that research information serves institutional goals rather than constraining them.
The commitments articulated in the Barcelona Declaration provide a compelling blueprint for campus action. As each stage of the research lifecycle has moved online, vendors’ ability to collect and monetize information about institutions and faculty has expanded significantly. Campus engagement now can help avoid the use of institutional information by vendors for unintended and potentially adverse commercial purposes—harming campus culture through feelings of distrust and unproductive competitive pressure. Early proactive engagement by institutions can ensure that the collection and use of research information aligns with campus priorities and best interests, now and over the long term.
Further Reading:
Authors
HELIOS Open Advisory Council Members: Jim O'Donnell (Arizona State University), Sayeed Choudhury (Carnegie Mellon University), Dustin Fife (Colorado College), Tim McGeary (Duke University), Rita Teutonico (Florida International University), Camille Thomas (Florida State University), Caitlin Carter (HELIOS Open), Danny Anderson (HELIOS Open), Geeta Swamy (HELIOS Open and Duke University), Elisabeth Long (Johns Hopkins University), Chris Bourg (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Kristi Holmes (Northwestern University), Athena Jackson (University of California, Los Angeles), Santi Thompson (University of Houston), Mairéad Martin (University of Illinois), Cynthia Logsdon (University of Louisville), Michael R Dougherty (University of Maryland), Lakeisha Harris (University of Maryland, Eastern Shore), Alicia Salaz (University of Oregon), Stephen Jacobs (Rochester Institute of Technology), Zach Chandler (Stanford University)
SPARC: Nick Shockey (SPARC)
