Open Science at Europe’s universities 2020-2021

The report presents the outcomes of the 2020-2021 European University Association (EUA) Open Science Survey and provides evidence-based recommendations for institutions, researchers, research funders, and policymakers on the transition towards Open Science.

Some Key Results

• Open Science principles: over half (59%) of the surveyed institutions rated Open Science’s strategic importance as very high or high. Open Access to research publications was considered to be highly important for 90% of institutions, but only 60% considered its implementation level to be high. However, the gap between importance and implementation is much wider in data-related areas (RDM, FAIR and data sharing): high importance at between 55-70% of the institutions surveyed, with high levels of implementation at 15-25%.
• Open Science policies: 54% of institutions have an Open Science policy and 37% are developing one. Only 9% of surveyed institutions lack an Open Science policy or are not planning to draft one.
• Monitoring Open Access to research publications: 80% of institutions monitored the number of publications in their repository and 70% monitored articles published by their researchers in Open Access journals. In addition, almost 60% reported monitoring the cost of publications by their researchers in Open Access journals.

From principles to practices: Open Science at Europe’s universities 2020-2021 EUA Open Science Survey results (July 2021)