Policies, Practices, and Tools to Promote Open Science. Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union in Trans-regional Perspective

This document is largely based on the presentations and discussions during virtual dialogues on Open Science organised by the EU-LAC Foundation and OBREAL Global together with partners from different regions held on 6 and 7 April 2022. The main objective of the dialogues was to highlight policies, practices, and tools to promote Open Science, as well as emerging Open Science cooperation initiatives between institutions and networks in the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean, and other regions of the world. The seminar showed that Open Science means much more than open access to scientific publications and research data. Taking Open Science seriously means fundamentally rethinking conventional, sometimes outdated, processes of evaluation and indexing. It also means understanding that sharing scientific advances with all people is a fundamental human right and that the process of scientific research cannot be detached from the societies and peoples that fund it. The dialogues have shown that Latin America is far ahead of Europe when it comes to Open Access. This is probably because research funding in Latin America is almost exclusively in the hands of the state; in addition, the lack of access is also an indicator of social inequality. In Europe, Open Access and Open Science have a strong advocate in the EU. Still, despite all the Commission's recommendations, it always comes down to what is implemented at the national level. In the last two decades, several Latin American organisations have developed numerous ideas on Open Science that could also be useful for the European debate. Bi- regional and inter-regional dialogue is therefore essential.