Recommendations for Legal and Policy Harmonisation of Open and FAIR Science in the EU

The realisation of cross-border, multinational management of FAIR research data and the related participation of EU Member States in EOSC services require substantial efforts for legal reforms. As highlighted by a gap analysis, the European copyright and data protection legal frameworks present considerable flaws, which call for a prompt intervention by both EU and national policymakers. The issuance of a wide variety of calls for action and/or recommendations on the topic of Open Science, broadly intended, corroborates this need for policy guidance.

Most of the existing recommendations focus on a sector, if not a case-specific perspective relating to the stakeholders advancing them. Taking stock and building on old and new developments of the European policy landscape on Open Access, Open Science and FAIR research principles, the recommendations presented in the following pages boast the added value of embracing a holistic perspective on both copyright and data protection laws. Thus encompassing a multi-faceted account of the legislative and non-legislative reforms needed to pave the way towards effective, open, and inclusive research environments in Europe.

The recommendations presented here reflect a selection of the most relevant identified shortcomings of the current regulations, which have been operated based on three criteria:

1. The relevance of the legal obstacles at comparative level (e.g., profound regulatory fragmentation and divergences across the five EOSC-Pillar Member States);
2. The relevance of the legal obstacles to the guidelines issued for the benefit of individual stakeholders (e.g., specific needs to facilitate good practises);
3. The urgency of intervention upon provisions, whose modernisation has been deemed to be long overdue.

This is a digest of the recommendations included in Deliverable 4.6 “Legal and Policy Framework and Federation Blueprint” and was produced by the EOSC-Pillar project.