Open Science Principles of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Preamble

The Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), in accordance with its primary mission, which is to conduct high-quality research in a wide range of natural, technical and social sciences and the humanities, strives to ensure that the results of scientific activities of the institutes established by the CAS have the widest possible benefits for society.

The CAS is aware of the urgency of addressing complex and interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges. The CAS is also aware of the fundamental significance of science, technology and innovation for addressing these challenges and, last but not least, of the opportunities and potential arising from the development of the information society. The open exchange of knowledge, sharing and collaboration is important for science.

Through its institutes, the CAS has long been building and implementing open access to scientific information, generally in compliance with the standards of scientific integrity. The CAS sees this as a path to higher quality, transparency, sustainability and reproducibility of research. The CAS also welcomes the fact that the sharing of scientific data and other digital objects in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable-Accessible-Interoperable-Reusable) is becoming a new reality and standard in research.

The CAS subscribes to the Open Science principles in accordance with the commitment to the widest possible dissemination of the results of professional research and in accordance with the UNESCO recommendation and the embedding of Open Science in national, European and international science policy.

The Open Science Principles of the CAS, set out in the following chapters of this document, represent a further step towards greater openness and enable the future of science to be actively and sustainably shaped.

Support for Open Science by the CAS

The CAS aims to support the development of an environment that fosters greater openness of science and implementation of Open Science principles at the level of the entire CAS.

The CAS shall:

support the building and development of Open Science infrastructure and services, such as publishing platforms and repositories, and support education at the national and international level;
reward implementation of Open Science practices in the evaluation of research and professional activities of the CAS institutes;
actively support Open Science at the national and international level.

At the same time, the CAS aims to set a common framework for the implementation of Open Science principles, which are expected to be implemented and followed by all CAS institutes. For this purpose, a set of specific recommendations for CAS institutes has been prepared and is presented in the following part of the document.

Recommendations for CAS Institutes

Main Starting Points

The openness of the entire scientific research cycle, which in itself allows for more effective dissemination and reusability of research results and all its partial outputs, processes and steps, is a key starting point for the CAS in compliance with good scientific practice.

For the development of Open Science, the CAS encourages its institutes to follow these basic principles:

Openness

In order to ensure the accessibility and reusability of scientific knowledge, the principle of ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’ (with due regard to the protection of the institute’s intellectual property) should be followed.

Transparency

The provision of open access should be handled through Creative Commons CC BY or equivalent licence, so that findings can be transparently verified and reused by third parties at any time under transparent conditions.

FAIR Principles

Knowledge should be processed in compliance with research field standards. Metadata descriptions should be appropriately chosen and persistent identifiers should be used to ensure findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability.

Sustainability

Knowledge should be published in long-term secured and trustworthy repositories.

Open Scientific Outputs

Open scientific outputs are such outputs for which the open access to scientific publications, research data and metadata, software and source code is provided, and which are licenced under an open licence.

The CAS recommends that CAS institutes follow the requirements for publication outputs, research data and research software, and further elaborate them according to the needs and specifics of the institute into their own publication and data policies, or model data management plans (DMP).

The minimum metadata description of publication and non-publication results, research data and software is governed by the current requirements of the ASEP database of results of CAS institutes, which takes into account the requirements of the RIV information system for research, development and innovation, as well as good practice.

Publication – Open Access

CAS institutes are recommended to:

reserve sufficient rights to fulfil the open access requirements;
deposit a publication in the ASEP institutional repository of the CAS in the form of “version of record”^[1], or alternatively “author accepted manuscript”^[2], at the time of publication at the latest;
make accessible the data, tools and supporting resources that are necessary to verify the conclusions of a scientific publication, along with the publication;
select journals for publication of results carefully, primarily with regard to the quality of the peer review process.

Research Data - FAIR Principles

CAS institutes are recommended to manage research data in accordance with FAIR principles, in particular by:

ensuring findability, interoperability and reusability by appropriate choice of metadata description;
using open formats to ensure interoperability and sustainability;
using persistent identifiers to ensure mutual and sustainable interconnection of outputs, tools, processes, researchers and institutions.

CAS employees are further recommended to plan management of data (DMP), tools and supporting resources that are necessary for reusability and/or verifying results of research, in particular by:

regular updating of the DMP;
depositing research data as early as possible and within the timeframes specified in the DMP in a trusted repository that is indexed in the re3data system;
allowing open access to the deposited data as early as possible and within the timeframes specified in the DMP.

Research Software – Open Source

It is recommended to CAS Institutes that:

the program code necessary for reusing and/or validating published data is made openly available under an open source licence in a public repository, if possible.

^[1] Also known as “final published version”, “published journal article” and “published version”.

^[2] This is the version of the text after peer-review but before further interventions by the publisher, sometimes referred to as the “author’s postprint”.

Final Provisions

These Open Science Principles of the CAS replace the Open Access Policy at the Czech Academy of Sciences that was approved on 14 October 2010 at the 21st session of the CAS Academy Council.

The coordination and implementation of CAS Open Science principles will be carried out at the central level by the Library of the CAS.

The management of the CAS calls upon research-oriented institutes of the CAS to consistently implement the Open Science principles and reflect these principles in their internal regulations.

Approved at the 41st session of the CAS Academy Council on 26 November 2024