April 25
9:00–10:00 CEST
Keynote 1
Evolution of Research Systems and Research Cultures: Conditions for a Systemic Change in Scholarly Communication
Lidia Borrell-Damián (Science Europe)
Chair: tbd
Starting with a reflection on the values of research systems and the ways in which values can be embedded in institutional policies, an overview of the main challenges in research and innovation systems will be provided, including how a new generation of research policies can shape open science, scholarly communication and research assessment. Starting with a reflection on the values of research systems and the ways in which values can be embedded in institutional policies, an overview of the main challenges in research and innovation systems will be provided, including how a new generation of research policies can shape open science, scholarly communication and research assessment.
Lidia Borrell-Damián
Lidia Borrell-Damián has been the Secretary General of Science Europe since 2019. This association represents national public research organisations, funders and operators, based in Europe. As such, she is responsible for the organisation’s strategy and its implementation. His areas of expertise include a broad spectrum of higher education and research policies, such as the European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the European Research Area (ERA), the Global Research Council (GRC), ethics and integrity, research evaluation systems, international cooperation, research infrastructures, equity in access to scientific publications, Open Science, etc.
In her academic career, she obtained a PhD in Chemistry (speciality Chemical Engineering – Solar Energy) at the University of Barcelona (1995) where she was an Assistant Professor (1990–1998). She did a post-doctorate at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, USA, 1997–1998), and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada, 1999–2001). Her time in research policy management began at Pompeu Fabra University, where she was Director of the Research Service (2023–2005). She then moved to the European University Association (EUA) (Belgium), where she worked from 2006–2019, serving as R&D Director from 2013–19.
April 26
9:00–10:00 CEST
Keynote 2
An introduction to the work of Arcadia in Open Access
Ross Mounce (Arcadia)
Chair: Pierre Mounier
This talk will give an overview of Arcadia’s support for open access. Access to knowledge is a fundamental human right. It advances research and innovation, improves decision-making, exposes misinformation and is vital to achieving greater equality and justice. The internet has transformed how we share, find and use information. But some materials that should legally and morally be free for anyone to access are still constrained by paywalls and restrictive copyright regimes. Our grants help make this important information – including publicly funded research, standards, and laws – available for free online, and help people find and use this information. We do this by supporting direct activism for open access, and by working to improve open access to scholarship and the discoverability of open access content.
Ross Mounce
Dr Ross Mounce, Director of Open Access Programmes at Arcadia – a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Ross manages Arcadia’s open access grants. He was previously a postdoc in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, a Software Sustainability Fellow, and a Panton Fellow for open data in science. Ross gained his doctorate at the University of Bath, where his thesis focused on the role of morphology in analyses of evolutionary relationships that include fossil species.
April 26
17:30–18:15 CEST
Conference Closing
Promoting Multilingualism and Bibliodiversity by Enhancing Discoverability
Émilie Paquin and Vincent Larivière
Chair and closing: Mark Huskisson
Since the launch of the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, in 2019, we have seen an increasing understanding of the equity and diversity aspects of languages in science. Still, language inequities continue to characterize the scholarly ecosystem in favor of English and journals with a high impact factor (JIF), and this trend is global (Larivière, Siler, 2022).
As the fifth most spoken language in the world, the status of the French language in the sciences, particularly in the fields of humanities and social sciences, appears to be less critical than that of languages spoken by a smaller number of speakers. While this observation may initially reassure about the ability of French speakers to publish their research in their native language, the relative strength of the French language in this regard is not consistent worldwide.
Canadian whose mother tongue or working language is French feel much greater linguistic pressure than their counterparts in France, as they account for just over 20% of the 40 million Canadians. What’s more, almost 44% of French-speaking Canadian researchers had never published a research article in French – 71% in the technical sciences and medicine, and 35% in the humanities and social sciences (Forgues, 2021).
In response to these concerning statistics, the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur du Québec, in collaboration with the Délégation Générale de la Langue Française, is launching a three-year project to explore ways of increasing the discoverability of French-language research.
The purpose of this proposal is to outline the primary objectives of the project, led by Vincent Larivière under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair in Open Science. It aims to gather feedback from the OPERAS community and foster the exchange of perspectives and approaches regarding bibliodiversity and multilingualism.
Émilie Paquin
Specialized in digital scientific publishing, Émilie Paquin has held various positions within the Érudit Consortium for nearly 15 years. She now works with the UNESCO Research Chair on Open Science, held by Vincent Larivière professor of information science at the Université de Montréal.