Parallel Session 11 – Sustainable Operation and Development II
Moderator: TBC
Location: Room 2106
11.1) Embracing Emergence and Building for Sustainability, Librarians Collaborating within New, Emerging and Evolving Fields: the Austrian WissKomm Community of Practice, a Case Study
Presenters: Clara Ginther, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria; Susanne Luger, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Librarians today are continuously called to engage with new and emerging fields. This asks for gaining an understanding of these subjects, of monitoring their evolution and of developing new skills and practices. Often this takes place in a collaborative way. Foundational questions are: What practices, skills and know how to develop? How to collaborate? How to stay abreast of developments? How to give longevity to what is being developed given limited means, resources and capacity? It is the challenge of embracing emergence and, in step, building for sustainability. In this presentation the evolution of the Austrian wissKomm community of practice will serve as a case study in how to respond to this challenge, the answers it found and the lessons learnt thus far.
The wissKomm community of practice originates from a four-year Austrian project on predatory publishing, 2021-2024. The project was embedded in the library-led project Austrian Transition to Open Access 2. The university rectors had requested that a project on predatory publishing be included. The deliverables were providing a catalogue of measures and services for university and library leadership, a website for researchers, training of university and library staff and an awareness campaign. The initial project team consisted of sixteen librarians and three research support staff from eighteen universities. They had varying knowledge about predatory publishing, ranging from very little to years of experience.
This set up provided the project leads with several challenges. A shared understanding of predatory publishing had to be developed. There is no established good practice of addressing predatory publishing, except for the base line that publishing in a predatory journal ought to be avoided. A four-year term would not suffice. Predatory practices are evolving. Whatever the project outcomes would be, they would have to be continuously curated. Applying a project management methodology, designing work packages, assigning team members to work packages and fulfilling the deliverables, thus, was not a viable option. It was decided to work with an open horizon, with emergence. No outcomes would be set.
The focus was, instead, on building for sustainability through the development of a community of practice out of which the project results would evolve from a joint learning and development process. Communities of practice rest on three pillars, domain, practice and community, providing three focal points: continuous study of the subject and its context; building an open community; developing skills and practices on evaluating journals, communicating about predatory practices and engaging researchers. This process led to an adaptation of the deliverables and an evolution of the domain from predatory practices to quality of open scholarly communication, from solely combatting fraud to fostering quality. An equitable community had grown and flourishes, bringing together a range of knowledge and know how. Skills as well as shared practices had been developed. Among the project results were an online application for evaluating journals, an online course, facilitated dialogues at Austrian universities and continuing collaboration with Think Check Submit and DOAJ. Outcomes that arose from engaging with emergence and building for sustainability.
11.2) Research Security and Open Science: Towards Secure Open Science
Presenters: Tiberius Ignat, SKS Knowledge Services, Germany; Paul Ayris, UCL (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science, LCCOS), United Kingdom
On May 23, 2024, EU Ministers adopted a Council Recommendation to Enhance Research Security, addressing urgent risks associated with openness and international cooperation in research. These include knowledge transfer, malign influence, and ethical violations. Member States are expected to report their progress on implementing these recommendations by mid-2025 as part of the Biennial Report on the Implementation of the Global Approach.
Similarly, the National Security and Investment Act was updated in the UK to include guidance for the higher education and research-intensive sectors. The UK saw updates on the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS). From 2022, several requirements were made to create UKRI Trusted Research and Innovation Principles and guidance for Managing Risks in International Research and Innovation.
This concern is not unique to Europe. In 2022, the U.S. introduced the Guidance for Implementing National Security (NSPM-33), while Canada followed in 2023 with its National Security Guidelines for Research Partnerships. Europe’s Council Recommendation on Enhancing Research Security reflects this global shift toward securing research environments amid growing geopolitical tensions. In Canada, a Research Security Centre is already functional. The USA budgeted 67 million USD for its SECURE Center (Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem).
However, this new security context must not stifle the core principles of open science, which remain essential to innovation. These new recommendations and acts offer a unique opportunity to reframe and implement open science. New practical models could align open science practices with democratic values and security needs. Instead of being viewed as a barrier, research security can be leveraged as an opportunity to enrich open science, ensuring it becomes more pragmatic and relevant in the current geopolitical cycle.
The widespread benefits of open and engaged research—public access to knowledge, enhanced peer review, transparency, reproducibility, and broader societal impact—remain valid. However, these principles must be adapted to the new geopolitical reality, which is marked by protectionism, restricted mobility, manipulated communication, and AI developments (a new technology which could be both beneficial and detrimental to society, hence a new dual-use technology, and a subject to research security matters).
Open research flourished in a globalised world where Western Civilization set the standard for collaborative advancements in climate change, space, and health research. Those times are changing. A new geopolitical cycle demands competitiveness and reciprocity while fostering civil advancements, trade, and social development.
This presentation explores the new opportunities for open science in the context of research security for the LIBER community, centred around research librarians, academic presses, data managers and their connection with policymakers and research administrators. The adage ‘As open as possible, as closed as necessary’ works, but the phrase needs to be unpacked. What do the words ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’ mean in practice? This paper spells out what needs to happen: training and skills development need to be turned into practice.
11.3) Driving the Sustainable Development of an Open Research Data Culture: Two Examples of Collaborative Best Practice from the University of Malta
Presenter: Steve Micallef, University of Malta, Malta
Open Science is a gradual process that requires a culture shift among the entire research community; as such, it is at different stages of development in different parts of Europe. Malta – a small island country in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and the North African coast, which acceded to the European Union in 2004 – is at the forefront of Open Science initiatives, spearheaded by the University of Malta (UM) Library. Since 2014 the UM Library has been carrying out sustained efforts to drive the sustainable development of an open research data culture and guide researchers through the change, both internally and via international collaborative projects. This presentation focuses on two examples of collaborative best practices to support the sustainable development of Open Science, especially for smaller or under-resourced universities.
First, we will showcase University of Malta’s internal role in advancing sustainable Open Science practices, enhancing research accessibility and management, and supporting collaboration among researchers, as well as between the Library and the Research Office. Following the establishment of an Open Science Department in 2017, the UM formalised its approach with an Open Access Policy in 2019. To further strengthen this commitment, in 2021 the policy was upgraded to a mandate formally requiring researchers to adhere to Open Science principles. In 2023, the UM Library expanded their open research focus to include research data management and implemented a data repository, drUM, providing a robust platform for managing and sharing FAIR data. drUM has become an integral part of research data management at the UM because the repository’s functionality encourages and enables the adoption of research data management practices, ensuring compliance during the grant application process and clearly signposting to how individual research data produced at the UM can be accessed and reused. The platform also includes specific funder and grant details within the item metadata, which fosters researcher collaboration, alongside powerful reporting dashboards and visibility over the research shared, enabling proficient reporting and compliance monitoring. By actively promoting the data repository and core open data principles, we have observed that a gradual culture shift towards Open Science is taking place, and research data management is being integrated as a fundamental aspect of the research process, even at the early stages of research projects.
Second, we will present the work of the SEA-EU Alliance – a European Commission initiative which, since 2019, unites nine coastal universities across Europe – focusing on Work Package 5: Building an Open Future: Fostering Open Science across the SEA-EU Community and Beyond, the research data management and open data project steered by the UM Library. This had various deliverables, including the drafting of a SEA-EU RDM Policy Framework for the SEA-EU Alliance, adaptable by participating universities for their respective communities, further promoting open data practices.