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Open Science Policy (gültig ab 9.3.2022)

1. Aims and Scope

WWTF supports the principles of openness throughout the entire research process and promotes the ideas of Open Science. WWTF recommends that all grantees allow their research to be guided by the following principle: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary."1

For this purpose, WWTF has developed the following Open Science Policy, which defines requirements and guidance for all WWTF grantees as of 09.03.2022.

2. Rights, Roles and Responsibilities

WWTF is responsible for:

  1. Fostering the transition to Open Science (OS), as outlined in this policy, by applying measures of openness and adoption of the FAIR principles2principles2 within internal processes and increasing the transparency of its actions.
  2. Ensuring funds to cover the costs of open access publication and related to data management and the stewardship of OS practices.
  3. Providing guidance material for the creation of a short and concise Data Management Plan (DMP)
    within applicable calls.
  4. Where applicable, introducing proper “openness” - related criteria during the evaluation and selection of proposals for funding.
  5. Practising responsible and fair research assessment by structuring the review process appropriately.
    This includes placing emphasis on the intrinsic merit of the work, rather than journal titles or publishers, journal impact factors or individual H Index when assessing research outputs during evaluation procedures (WWTF is a signatory of The Declaration on Research Assessment - DORA3)DORA3).
  6. Monitoring policy compliance and encouraging grantees to provide public accounts of their OS activities and research impact.
  7. Actively supporting the uptake of OS practices (in addition to open access publications and research data). This includes involving relevant stakeholders to foster collaborations that extend beyond the academic discourse.

Grantees are responsible for:

  1. Adopting principles of openness and application of the FAIR principles in their research practices wherever possible and embracing openness as an inherent process in the design and implementation of research projects.
  2. Managing and sharing research outputs in adherence to the principles and requirements outlined in this policy. Depositing publications and research data in repositories that meet trusted quality standards4 and/or are linked with initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud5. Publications supported in whole or in part by WWTF should include a statement describing how other re- searchers can access any research data, original software or materials underpinning the research.
  3. Using persistent identifiers such as DOIs, ORCID or WWTF Grant ID for grant applications, management and reporting processes. This is important in enabling the persistent availability and tracking of research activities and in increasing transparency for researchers and WWTF as a funder.

3. WWTF Open Science Focus

All OS research practices aim to increase transparency and collaboration between institutions and disciplines. WWTF has identified two main areas where this can play an important part: i) providing access to publications and ii) providing access to shareable research data. Funded publications (and research data) must be made available under an open -usage license, such as Creative Commons (CC BY, CC0) or similar according to cOAlition S standards6.

3.1 Open Access to Publications

The following rules apply to all peer-reviewed publications that result from research supported entirely or in part by WWTF.

  1. In the case of “Gold Open Access”, WWTF requires that a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication be deposited in a suit- able open access repository. The published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript should be made available immediately and the metadata made fully open, searchable and machine-readable from the time of deposit.

  2. In the case of “Green Open Access”, WWTF requires that the full text of all such publications be made publicly available upon acceptance for publication (after peer-review but prior to the publisher’s copy-editing and production)7.

  3. In the case of “Hybrid Open Access”, the costs of open access for a single contribution in a subscription venue (Hybrid Open Access) can be covered. Please note that this option is only possible if there is a transformative open access agreement between the publisher and research institution (see list
    of agreements8) or if the journal is a transformative open access journal according to the cOAlition S
    criteria9.

  4. WWTF will recognise open access publication fees such as article processing charges (APCs) or book processing charges (BPCs) as eligible costs. For quality assurance purposes, journal titles must be listed in standard directories such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)10 for the costs to be eligible.

  5. WWTF requires that funded publications be made available under an open content license, such as
    Creative Commons (CC BY, CC0) or similar according to cOAlition S standards11.

  6. While the dominant type of scientific publication is the journal article, grantees are strongly encouraged to provide open access to other types of publications such as monographs, book chapters, conference proceedings, grey literature, reports etc.

  7. Where relevant, WWTF strongly encourages its grantees to post preprints of their work under an open license on a preprint platform and/or in a repository. When an article is published, grantees should request the repository to add a journal DOI to the preprint record.

Footnotes:

1 https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/open-science_en

2 https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

3 https://sfdora.org/

4 https://www.re3data.org/

5 https://eosc-portal.eu/

6 https://www.coalition-s.org/faq/which-licences-are-compliant-with-plan-s-2/

7 If there is an embargo period during which archiving is not permitted, the period should not be longer than 12 months. If the embargo period is longer, select an alternative publishing outlet. For publisher’s self-archiving policies, please consult the SHERPA/RoMEO database prior to choosing the outlet.

 

 

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