Second french plan for open science

Open science refers to the unhindered dissemination of results, methods and products from scientific research. It draws on the opportunity provided by recent digital progress to develop open access to publications and – as much as possible – data, source code and research methods. It is a means for publicly funded research projects to retain control over the results they produce. It builds an ecosystem in which science becomes better substantiated and more transparent, reproducible, effective and cumulative. It aims to democratize access to knowledge, which is useful for teaching and training, and for the economy, public policy, citizens and society as a whole. Finally, it constitutes a lever for scientific integrity and builds citizen trust in science.

The French Plan for Open Science has provided France with a coherent and dynamic policy in the field of open science. It was announced in 2018 by the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Frédérique Vidal, and is coordinated by the Committee for Open Science, which brings together the Ministry, the universities and research performing organizations and the scientific community. Substantial progress has been made in the three years since this policy was introduced. The percentage of open access scientific publications in France has risen from 41% to 56%. Once the National Fund for Open Science had been created, it launched two calls for projects to promote open science publication and provided support for international structuring initiatives. The French National Research Agency (Agence nationale de la recherche, ANR) and other funding agencies now ask the projects they fund to make the publications available in open access and draw up data management plans. The  position of Chief Data Officer has been created in the Ministry and a network of such Chief Data Officers is currently being deployed in the universities and research performing organizations. Around twenty universities and research organisations now have an open science policy. Several guides and recommendations for putting open science into practice have been published.

The progress already made and the changes in the international context induced us to extend, renew and strengthen our commitments by adopting a Second French Plan for Open Science, which will take effect until 2024. With this new plan, France is continuing its ambitious trajectory initiated by the Digital Republic Act of 2016 and confirmed by the Research Programming Law of 2020, which includes open science as one of the missions of researchers.

This Second French Plan extends the scope to include source code from research, structures actions promoting data sharing and openness through the creation of the Recherche Data Gouv platform, it increases the number of transformative levers available to generalise the practice of open science and is divided up into different disciplines and themes. It is firmly attached to a  European-wide vision and, in the context of the French presidency of the European Union, proposes to act in favour of open science being effectively taken into account in both individual and collective assessments for research. This involves initiating a process of sustainable transformation in order to ensure that open science becomes a common and shared practice, encouraged by the whole international ecosystem of higher education, research and innovation.• Second French Plan for Open Science.