12 / 11 / 2018
Joint Statement on the Revision of the PSI Directive
EARTO, along with BusinessEurope, DIGITALEUROPE, the European University Associations (EUA) and Science Europe, together representing the key European Research and Innovation stakeholders, have published a Joint Statement to voice our concerns regarding the extension of the European Public Sector Information (PSI) directive to research data. The European Research and Innovation community is very supportive of the European agenda to promote Open Science and Innovation, and shares a common commitment to the principle of making research data “as open as possible and as closed as necessary”. Indeed, a balanced and flexible approach to data sharing is essential for an efficient European RD&I ecosystem, preserving scientific freedom and fostering collaboration and knowledge transfer from basic research to the market. In the frame of the extension of the scope of the PSI Directive to research data, care needs to be taken to ensure that such balanced approach is preserved. To that end, we call on the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to:- Reconsider the purpose and interest of the proposed extension of the PSI directive to research data.
- Ensure a sound coherent approach between the different EU legislative texts on research data sharing, following the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
- Focus on the optimal re-use of research data and not on the (unconditional) opening of such data, with an explicit statement that only research data that has already been voluntarily and unconditionally published or put in an open access repository by research performing organisations is in the scope of this directive.
- Clearly avoid extending even further the scope of this directive to “preparatory studies” and to “projects with only partial public funding”.
