Council of the European Union welcomes the Helsinki Initiative

On the 10th of June 2022, the Competitiveness Council approved the conclusions on research assessment and implementation of open science.

In the paragraph 2, the Council of the European Union "ACKNOWLEDGES that in order to accelerate the implementation and the impact of Open Science policies and practices across Europe, action has to be taken to move towards a renewed approach to research assessment, including incentive and reward schemes, to put in place a European approach in accordance with the Pact for Research and Innovation in Europe, and strengthen capacities for academic publishing and scholarly communication of all research outputs, and encourage where appropriate, the use of multilingualism for the purpose of wider communication of European research results";

Accordingly, the conclusions address three areas:

• I. Reform of research assessment systems in Europe
• II. European approach and capacities for academic publishing and scholarly communication
• III. Development of multilingualism for European scholarly publications

As regards multilingualism, in the paragraph 27 the Council "EMPHASISES that one of the main goals of Open Science is to increase the dissemination and impact of scientific research results; NOTES that English has become the lingua franca for international scientific cross-border collaboration and for communication in many scientific communities; CONSIDERS that reaching non-academic audiences may require dedicated publishing formats, written in less technical language, and ACKNOWLEDGES the important role of multilingualism in the context of science communication with society, in particular on the national and regional levels; in this respect, WELCOMES initiatives to promote multilingualism, such as the Helsinki initiative on multilingualism in scholarly communication".

Read the fulltext Conclusions on research assessment and implementation of open science on the European Union website.