Voor de European Federation of National Academies of Sciences
and Humanities (ALLEA) bepleitte Kroes het benutten van data delen
in wetenschap en politiek. Daarvoor liggen op dit moment de juiste
technologische infrastructuren en worden nog steeds infrastructuren
ontwikkeld.
Samenwerking is daarbij van belang tussen overheden,
bedrijfsleven en wetenschap. Net als in haar gesprek met SURF geeft Kroes dat de EU-beleid
gericht is op het verder vergroten van de transparantie en open
toegang van data. Onderzoek dat wordt uitgevoerd met steun van het
Horizon 2020 programma moet dan ook allemaal Open Access zijn.
"Let's tear down the walls that keep learning sealed off. And let's
make science open"
U leest de volledige speech van Neelie Kroes
hieronder
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
To make progress in science, we need to be open and share.
The British scientist Isaac Newton famously once said, along
with many other luminaries over the years, "If I have seen further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". That may seem rather
modest for the man who is credited with so many lasting ideas. But
indeed he was right: because he couldn't have reached the
astonishing results he did without accessing and learning from the
work of others. Without the raw data, the technical innovations and
the findings of people like Brahe, Copernicus, and Kepler. And of
course of Galileo, once himself a member of this very Academy.
Open data is overal
Openness and sharing are not exclusive to the scientific
community. The principle of making publicly funded information
resources freely available also applies to data collected by public
administrations. Our open data package, which I launched last
December, shows that there are benefits for web entrepreneurs,
ordinary citizens, governments and many others too.
But sharing data, and having the forum to openly use and build
on what is shared, are essential to science. They fuel the progress
and practice of scientific discovery. That's why scientists have
long sought out new tools and new ways to share their
knowledge.
First through institutions: academies and learned societies like
yours are crucial as a forum to exchange ideas.
Then printed scientific publications: a model which served its
purpose for a long time, combining wide distribution with quality
assurance in the pre-electronic age.
Big data needs big collaboration
Then, of course, the ultimate sharing tool, the Internet.
Because remember, the World Wide Web was invented by physicists
at CERN. And no wonder. Because it's a tool enabling vast amounts
of data and results to be shared, examined, compared and published.
All things that scientists crave.
And we are just now beginning to realise how significant a
transformation of science the openness enabled by ICT
infrastructures can mean. We start the era of open science.
Take data analysis. Big Data analysis: Every year, the
scientific community produces data 20 times as large as that held
in the US Library of Congress.
And big data needs big collaboration. Without that, it's not
possible to collect, combine and conclude results from different
experiments, in different countries, in different disciplines. Look
at genome sequencing. Open access databases like the European EMBL
and the US GenBank double every 9 months, and already store over
400 billion DNA bases. These initiatives deliver more efficient,
practical and important results than could ever have been achieved
with separate, closed data systems. And indeed, this approach can
be credited with having created the whole new science of systems
biology.
Niet alleen Europa
That is why we've invested in high-speed research networks like
GÉANT. Today, GÉANT is connecting millions of researchers,
scholars, educators and students. That is why we want to promote
ever better and open infrastructures for research
collaboration.
And I don't limit our ambitions to Europe. We are working with
international partners - the G8 but also major emerging economies -
to come up with a global approach to make the world's scientific
resources interoperate, and open to discovery. Alongside that,
we're also working with the US, Canada and Australia to create a
global coordination mechanism that puts scientific communities in
the lead to define the global web of knowledge. With these
initiatives, we can create a resource to link up researchers and
their data wherever they are, whatever their field.
But Open science isn't just about opening up data. It's also
about sharing research findings. So that scientists can learn from
each other: and society overall can benefit, too. What's more, the
changes in the value chain that the Internet enables make such
sharing economically possible. So I'm delighted that, after all
these years, many share my enthusiasm for open access to
peer-reviewed publications. This should apply for sure to all
research that is at least partly funded by the public. But the
logic of openness and sharing of course holds for all scientific
and scholarly research.
We already have the infrastructure supporting open access.
Researchers, funding bodies and the public are already using and
re-using thousands of publications hosted around the world in
e-Infrastructures like OpenAIRE.
Horizon 2020
This is important. Not just because it helps scientists and
science to progress. But because we should never forget that the
number one research funder in Europe is the taxpayer. And they
deserve to get the largest possible reward from that
investment.
That is why the Commission will soon present a Communication and
a Recommendation proposing the way forward on open access to
research results. It will reflect the Commission's decision, in its
Innovation Union Flagship policy, to make all outputs from research
funded under the EU's own Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation
framework programme openly accessible.
It will look at the role of e-Infrastructures in supporting open
access. And it will also look at the role of rewards that
incentivise researchers to share. All together, it will show how
widening access to publications and data generates substantial
benefits and how we can, together, make the European Research Area
a successful enterprise.
Grenzen aan openheid
Of course I recognise there are limits to openness and that
there are costs associated with it. We must protect personal data,
for example. Occasionally there may be security reasons that argue
against wide distribution. And sometimes there are private
investments to defend.
But for me, these are exceptions, not the rule.
None of that means that a model dating back hundreds of years is
still the right one for the internet age.
None of that means we should cut back on life-saving cancer
research in the supposed interests of patients - when we can ensure
that data is anonymised or aggregated.
None of that means subscription-based models for access to
research publications should continue to be dominant in an era
where distribution costs approach zero.
And none of that means we should withhold from the public the
work funded by their tax Euros.
Make science open!
Without collaboration, science doesn't work and now we have the
ICT infrastructures that make it easy and cheap to collaborate.
With the right infrastructure and the right approach, we can bring
on a new age of scientific practice and discovery.
So, wherever you sit in the value chain, whether you're a
researcher or an investor or a policy maker, my message is clear:
let's invest in the collaborative tools that let us progress. Let's
tear down the walls that keep learning sealed off. And let's make
science open"
Deze speech werd door Neelie Kroes uitgesproken bij
de European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities
Annual Meeting - "Open infrastructures for Open Science"