The Hague Declaration – Fostering Open Science

By Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, Director of National network services, the National Library of Finland
Liber, president

 

The Hague Declaration aims to foster agreement on how best to enable access to facts, data and ideas for knowledge discovery in the Digital Age. By removing barriers to accessing and analysing the wealth of data produced by society, we can find answers to major challenges such as climate change, depleting natural resources and globalisation.

LIBER and the National Library of Finland have been advocating for a modern fit-for-purpose European copyright system that recognises the needs of research and development, education and scholarship.

As part of this effort, preparations were made to draw up a Text and Data Mining (TDM) Declaration. The Declaration was published on the 6th of May 2015 in Brussels. On the day of the launch, around 50 organisations had signed it. The number of organisations and individuals signing has been growing every day showing that research organisations, research funding organisations, researchers, industry and many others stakeholders fully recognize the Declaration’s importance. At the end of May there are close to 160 organisations and 350 individuals who have signed the Declaration. National Library of Finland as well as CSC, the IT-centre for Research were the first Finnish organisations to sign.

Liber has also been promoting Open Science as means of strengthening the global competitiveness of European research. We believe that the move towards openness will lead to increased transparency, better quality research, a higher level of citizen engagement, and will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery through the facilitation of data-driven innovation.

Open Science is a top priority also in Finland. Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture has launched the Open Science and Research Initiative for 2014-2017.

The Hague Declaration: http://thehaguedeclaration.com/

 

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