Can the reward system learn to love open science? Part 1 with Jean-Claude Burgelman

This is the first episode in a short series discussing open science and the reward system. The open science movement has been gaining momentum over the past decade, prompting initiatives such as cOAlition S, with its plan to increase open access publications. But while the goals of open science are welcomed by many, challenges remain. And top of the list is the researcher reward system. 

In this first episode, host Stephane Berghmans, Elsevier Vice President of Academic and Research Relations EU, welcomes Jean-Claude Burgelman to the podcast. Burgelman is eminently qualified to talk about this topic. Not only is he a part-time Professor of open science policy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, but was also recently Head of Unit Open Data Policies and Science Cloud at the European Commission, and an open access envoy for the organization.

Show notes:
Jean-Claude Burgelman was responsible for open science and data policies of DG RTD, European Commission. He joined the European Commission in 1999 as a Visiting Scientist in the Joint Research Centre (the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies - IPTS), where he became Head of the Information Society Unit in 2005. In January 2008, he moved to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (attached to the president of the EC) as adviser for innovation policy. Since 1-10-2008, he joined DG RTD, as advisor and then Head of Unit in charge of top level advisory boards like the European Research and Innovation Area Board, the Innovation for Growth Group and the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities. Read more

• Frontiers in Big Data article mentioned in the podcast "Open Science, Open Data, and Open Scholarship: European Policies to Make Science Fit for the Twenty-First Century"
• Related webinar: Open science and the reward system: how can they be aligned?

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Transcript

Giacomo Mancini (00:00)

 Hello, I’m Giacomo Mancini. Welcome to Research 2030 – an Elsevier podcast series in which guests from academia and beyond join us in exploring, debating and challenging the changing research landscape. And welcome to Episode 8: “Can the reward system learn to love open science?” the first in a series of episodes devoted to open science.

 While few agree on a definition of open science, the term is generally used to describe the democratization of research. This includes new ways of working and sharing, often drawing on technology, which support open collaboration and allow everyone to freely access, participate in and benefit from scientific endeavour.

 The open science movement has been gaining momentum over the past decade, prompting initiatives such as cOAlition S,with its plan to increase open access publications. But it is the rapid and devastating spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 that has seen adoption of open science principles escalate, with nations openly sharing data and publishers providing free and immediate access to relevant peer-reviewed research.

 But while the goals of open science are welcomed by many, challenges remain. And top of the list is the researcher reward system – all too often, funders and universities consider a researcher’s article citations when making key grant and career decisions. But where does that leave scientists wanting to pursue a more open route? 

 Our guest for this first episode, Professor Jean-Claude Burgelman, is eminently qualified to talk about this topic. Not only is he a part-time Professor of open science policy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, he was also recently Head of Unit Open Data Policies and Science Cloud at the European Commission, and an open access envoy for the organization.  Over the course of this conversation with Elsevier Vice President of Academic and Research Relations EU, Stephane Berghmans, Jean-Claude explains why he believes the time is ripe for new metrics that will contribute to making science a truly open enterprise.

Stephane (02:19)

So Jean-Claude, I would like to start by welcoming you and thanking you for joining this episode of Research 2030 podcasts. So the series explores the trends and challenges facing research leadership today and where research is heading tomorrow. And today we'll speak about open science. So I personally know you, but given you've recently left your position of open access envoy at the European commission, can I please ask you to introduce yourself to our listeners?

Burgelman (02:49)

Indeed, thanks for inviting me for this podcast. Stephane and I'm looking forward to, to have a, an in-depth discussion about, the future of science. Indeed. Now my background is I, I was an academic for many years at the university of Brussels in the department of communication studies and, and in particularly political economy, telecom and so forth. Then I went to the research center of the European commission, working away and I was in charge of the unit on information technologies where we did a lot of work, on the, how new developments in the web, in the internet, affected and changed, the economy, social systems, political campaigns and so on. I mentioned it because it will come back later on, in one of the answers to your questions. And in 2008, I came to Brussels in 2008, 19 to Brussels to join the policy departments, of European commission. And I became head, of the units involved with open access, open data, open science and the science cloud. And at the end, took over the job of open access envoy, which I quit, two months ago because I retired from the European commission and I wanted to rejoin academia. So I'm now back to where it all started 40 years ago at university.

Stephane (04:05)

Okay. So are you, are definitely an open science expert and an advocate, and I'm sure will not settle the question, the definition of open science today, but for the benefit of the listeners, could you maybe tell us briefly what open science means to you?

Burgelman (04:21)

Open science is what you see today on a daily basis in all newspapers in all specialized journals with regard to, to what is happening in the research to fight the pandemic of Covid-19. The way scientists collaborate openly, the way they share their data, the way they publish their data in open access, the way publishers make it immediately available. So no, no embargoes anymore. This is actually a, I would say a kind of an example of what open science is all about. And in the nutshell, if you, if you define it more abstract, open science is science of the 21st century. It is science being done in a way which is open, collaborative shared with a larger input from the non-institutional scientists like a citizen science and with a much more accountable element in terms of the responsibility, the transparency and so forth. So it is in a certain sense, a new phase in the modus operandi of science. Characterized by openness on the one hand, collaborative actions on the other hand.

So it still is science but it is done in a different way. It is done in a way enabled by the digital technologies and in a global world, that's what it is all about. 

 Stephane (05:46)

So it's interesting because you were talking about the situation today and you were talking already about the future. But I'd like to start by looking back at the time that you had in European Commission and did your research and innovation where actually we're heading and you were saying the development of policy on open science. And you did that since 2013 when actually it was, you know, back then called science 2.0 and that's when we met the first time. So what were yours and the commission's initial goals on and around open science?

 Burgelman (06:17)

So as I said in the introduction, I used to head up a, a large team of researchers on the impact of internet technologies and mobile technologies on how the economy on how the social system, on how manufacturing was affected. That's what we did between 2000 and 2008-9 in the joint research center. And systematically we look there at the deep transformation, not only in modus operandi but also the effect it had on, on the, on the players, on the stakeholders. Of all the deep, the deep change of these technologies on how the way the economy was done to, to make it simple, to keep it simple with one example on how it was changing to a much more digital based economy nourish based economy and sold with new players, new power relationships and so on. And that is what afterwards, you know, there was a lot of work on there.

What they called the transformation from the economy 1.0 to 2.0 or from the web 1.0 to the web 2, well it doesn't matter, it's all the terminology. And when I joined the research department of, of the research policy department of European Commission in Brussels, one of the first things that I proposed to our hierarchy is that well it's, it's all good and well to have research programs. But there is also something fundamentally going on in the way research is being done. And that's where I said, well similarly to how, how the web changed from one to two, the economy from one to two, er I predict.

I think we are heading for a system, which we call them those days science 2.0. So we, we, we made a kind of a, an assumption that based on what we saw happening in other parts the 20 years before that of our society that something similar would happen or was already happening in the scientific world. And that's where we brought together the changes in data, data production, changing actors, the first signs of new players like social networks for scientists and so forth, open lab books, open notebooks, open source software, you know, and we made a picture there of, well, we think that this is a fundamental challenge for the scientific world for the coming years in Europe in particular. And for the global world in general. And the motivation to, to launch our work was not per say open access.

Burgelman (08:44)

The motivation was to be ready to make the European landscape of science, which includes several thousands of universities and hundreds of funders and so forth to make sure that they would stay ahead of the change of the curve to come. Because in our past work on the economy and so forth, we did see that Europe was always lagging behind in, in innovating or taking on board the innovation that was happening in retail in manufacturing in the economy in distribution or whatsoever. So we started an action within DG research to make, to alert, so to speak, the key stakeholders and the key decision makers that a similar change at and most likely with, with an as deep intensity and an as deep disruptive effect as we saw in other parts of society was going to happen in the science world.

So our first ambition is the awareness, to put it bluntly, and then the second ambition is if this is happening, what should we do? 

Stephane (09:53)

Were you then successful? I mean, about raising this awareness about how to go about doing this?

Burgelman (10:00)

The building the awareness was 2013-2016. And so we did a lot of studies, a lot of evidence based. And we did a kind of a massive stakeholder review of what are the key issues, how do you perceive them, how do you see them is our analysis correct and so forth.

In 2016 as a result of all the preparatory work and the, the hundreds of discussions which we had, we came up with eight key points of attention that would be needed for European policy to make sure that the European science system stays ahead of the disruption to come and stays at the top of the global scientific system, so to speak.

So awareness successful because it was translated into a concrete policy action, which means all the member States agree with it, which means that all the ministers for which are competent for this in particular, the Amsterdam summit comes to mind there in, in May, 2016, gave an endorsement of the analysis and of the urgency to move forward. And that of course then led to the policy. But I have to say what, what is really important to understand in retrospect is the, the, the key role the commission played here was not so much in being the first in, in saying it, not at all. But we put it on the table and we brought it together. So we actually took what was living in the communities. We brought it, we aggregated it and retranslated it in, in a structured dialogue, in a structured exchange of ideas and analysis with all the key stakeholders.

Stephane (11:45)

So how has it developed beyond European commission? How has open science developed in the last five years in, in the whole of Europe then?

Burgelman (11:54)

Before the commission in 2016 made loud and clear that Europe has to move forward in view of open access, open data, the science clouds, new metrics and so forth. Before that, there was almost no formal policy in the member States. There were a lot of people thinking and talking about it, but mainly scientists. The whole idea for example, of the science club was the result of a, an indepth  discussion we had with people from, from EMBO in [need word]. So the bio, the bio people and a meeting which we had with the technical university vice chancellors of research who are responsible for the data handling because they were on the ground witnessing the explosion of data, the need of interoperable data to, for science to be able to take up the challenges of data science.

Now what the commission did is make it a venue by, by making it a formal policy 2016, we gave an enormous impetus to the member States to, to also work on, on their policies. And I think it is fair to say that thanks to the actual, the commission, which in itself was the result of the action, what was happening across Europe by the stakeholders galvanized and incentivized the national authorities in Europe to come up with their own open science policies. And I think that from 2016 to 2018, 19, what you see is that in almost every member state you have national open science policies, national open data policies, national open access policies, which to a very large degree share more or less the same ambitions than the ones the commission put forward in 2016.

It was almost a co-creation process and it was not top down because we use the ideas living around, but by bringing it to the forefront, it percolated back to the, to the, the member States. And that I think is something to be very happy about it because that is what I would say is, is European policy of the 21st century. And what you also see is that er as a result of that, what, what was for a long time, impossible to discuss, for example, open access of publications became suddenly a top discussion because it was put on the table and it was even banged on the table when coalition S was created. So all these kinds of activities, which were impossible five to 10 years ago are now because there is a large consensus that indeed open science is science of the 21st century. Not all of these policies are now no longer looked at as something exotic by a few geeks or freaks or nerds. But as something essential for having a competitive view of being scientific system.

Stephane (14:55)

And how is the situation then globally, because I mean, of course this has been in Europe and the commission has played a key role there. You can see the added value of the commission. But what, what would you say the situation is globally? I know you've traveled to China, I know you've gone to see the US also do you see differences between different parts of the world?

Burgelman (15:15)

Right. I'm sure that our differences, but I can say I think it is fair to say that in the, that in the key actors of the scientific ecosystem to put it in that way, meaning, you know, the transatlantic partners and, and then the, the, the Asian tigers in science, so to speak, or lions, like China, Japan, Korea and then also the old Pacific Australia and so forth. Now if you, if you take the, let's say the top 20 continents or countries which matter in science, I think you have exactly the same analysis. Of course the dynamics are different. In, in US you don't have a commission. And in China you have, you don't have a European commission either. So they're all decide in, in, in the way which we know they work. So that's the political culture. But I think that the components of open science, maybe it is not called open, a holistic open science policy has to commission that. But the components of that policy, open access, open data, fair data in terms of reproducibility and so forth, and new metrics. All of these components are across the globe on the table. The OACD supports it. I think it was two weeks ago, the OACD has published a new statement saying that Covid-19 goals for a sustainable open science global system. So it is, it is now a global, a global topic. And by the way when we, when we started working on it in 2013 and we Googled for science 2.0 and so I think we had something like a 250,000 mentions or something like that, whereas, no 250 million, whereas now it is close to 4 trillion. So it just shows you if at all Google mentions are valid indicator, it shows, it became a global discussion. You, you have open, I just saw on Twitter the open science community of Tilburg. So you see all kinds of things which were unthinkable until, until a few years ago are now standard across the globe.

Stephane (17:22)

Absolutely. So impactful in Europe, impactful globally.

Burgelman (17:26)

I really think that that is thanks to the commission. I think we really played a role there in being the first to put it prominently and highly on the agenda. We are not the ones who invented it. that would be an overstatement, but Europe should be proud on the fact that the commission meaning the political system of Europe, because the commission is not Jean-Claude Burgelman in this respect has, has had the courage and the commissioner in 2016, Carlos Moedas, has had the courage to elevate it there. And by doing so making it a global debate.

Stephane (18:00)

Okay. And then the other thing now is Covid-19 the pandemic. So before we move to the future of open science and given the times we're going through right now I know you've been quite vocal about the impact of the pandemic on open science and you even wrote a piece in in science business about it. So can you share with us what the impact, what do you think the impact of the pandemic has had on open science?

Burgelman (18:25)

Well, I would say that if, if there is already one positive collateral effects of, of, of the pandemic is that de facto open science is now accepted around the globe as the way forward to tackle complex, multidisciplinary global research issues. If you see how the scientific community but also the funder community and also the institutional community has reacted to the scientific challenges of of Covid-19. It is almost a kind of a best user case for how do you, how do you set up an open science research project? Immediately, there was data sharing, immediately there was a pooling of all the acts of all the articles without pay walls into one central access points or gateway. So suddenly there was open access for all relevant publications, including articles in newspapers.

Thanks to thanks to the availability of the data sets, which are, which, which is called open data in the open science jargon. All kinds of artificial intelligence algorithmic searches could be done in order to, to better support the data crunching of how the virus is moving, how the, how the virus can be fought and so forth. Now what, what all that skepticism that this is the way forward for the future has been taken away.The necessity to be fast and the necessity to not to lose time because of the old scientific system, so to speak, urged de facto our scientific system to do what you would, what we would call by hindsight as the first global open science scientific project, which is what is going on now.

Stephane (20:29)

That's great because I actually, you given me a great leeway into the next one because what you're saying is that the pandemic, with its positive collateral, which is convincing people that open science is the way to go, now we can just move into the future and get it going. you wrote an article in Frontiers with your colleagues from the commission in December of last year before the pandemic. But there you said that the reward and incentive system for researchers is a key open science challenge and a broader issue for which, you know, the responsibility lies with the scientific community. So how do you see it today? Is it still the challenge that needs to be solved for open science to move forward?

Burgelman (21:12)

Well there is a stick and the carrot and I prefer the carrot. If you want to incentivize the scientific community to move forward in, in an open science direction, which means that they have to make their data available in fair formats, which means that they have to do an effort to go for open access publishing and so forth. Now, if you want them to go into that direction it means that they have to change their habitsu. It's a cultural change. Now the lucky /unlucky coincidence of having Covid is that suddenly there was an enormous carrot named survival. If we don't share, if we don't make our data fair, if we don't have all the scientific literature immediately available for, for everyone and the data underlying it for TBM purposes and so forth, we will simply lose so much time that, that gonna probably endanger, millions of people and trillions of dollars to, to the societal system.

So that was one carrot of course. And that is not a carrot which I hope we will not have too much, but it is clear that that in order to have this cultural change if, so, if you, if we accept, if we accept that this is the modus operandi for the future and we will have more pandemics and we will have more global challenges. If you take the societal development goals of the United Nations while you have a list of potential global research challenges there. So if we accepted what we learned in how we can do a science, due to Covid-19 will, be the modus operandi of the future or call it differently is open science. Then the key thing is to change the incentive system, the carrots and that of course is, is where it blocks it funders are increasingly willing to, to make it an obligation to move in that direction across the globe.

 Burgelman (23:08)

But universities are saying the same, but in the end of the one is saying, yeah, but most of the resistance is from the scientist. And why is it? Well, the problem is very simple. If I am not, if I am not incentivized in one way or another for making mark, for doing the effort to change my research and my scientific culture, in this case, for example, for making my data FAIR, which are fair find-able, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, it's an extra effort. Why would I do it as a scientist? So we need to come up with, we can wait for another disaster that to urge the scientific community. But a much more proactive, a way forward would be to change the incentive system. Meaning that where the whole system is now only looking at one element of your scientific productivity, namely what you publish.

And that's the only element or the most by far the most important element that counts for submitting grants and for your career track. Well, if that is the only indicator, why would I do an effort to go into open access? Why would I do enough to go into open peer review? Why would I do an effort to make my data fair and open? So what we need to do there is to compliment the indicators which we have now, which is one little element of the scientific process. The article, the publication, complimented by a series of indicators which are a reflection of what I need to do to be in an open science modus. So it is, it is actually as simple as that. But it is, it is by the way, it is a bit similar than the discussion which you have in the, in the rankings.

Burgelman (24:56)

A lot of the discussion on the rankings are mainly looking at one or two output indicators. And you get, you get increasingly now rankings based on a, on a like for example the ranking which Times Higher Education by the way together with Elsevier published two weeks ago, which is looking at how universities comply with the SDGs, the sustainable development goals. It is also bringing on board much more indicators which reflect the true productivity if I may say so of university. So the proposal here is to, to have alongside the indicator which we have now the h-factor though the article impact factor, so to speak, to compliment it with a series of indicators which reflect an open science activity. And in doing so, if that is then taking into account in in, in the way grants are distributed, the way careers are evaluated and granted, well then it is very easy to predict that the scientist will follow.

Stephane (25:58)

Of course. Do you actually know of examples where this, this, actually is taking place?

Burgelman (26:05)

First of all, there is quite a lot of discourse by some players that they are indeed no longer using only the, the impact factor has the only criteria to evaluate Mr. or Mrs. X. But this is not formalized. There is no a harmonized view on it because, okay, the, the, the essence of the scientific system is that a ranking which is which is valued in country X has the same intrinsic elements in country Y. Otherwise you can't compare the value of the scientists. So you cannot, you cannot have a sets of indicators which vary across universities or across countries. So there is no formalized approach to it, but that are increasingly universities considering it.

But as far as I can see that are not that much. And in particular Dutch universities are pushing are there but it's still lacks I would say a formal recognition of that. If I, if, if, if my data are published in open formats and downloaded so many times it is at least as valuable if I then if I publish an article in a journal with factor x of something to say something like that, you know,

Stephane (27:23)

So finding a way credit

Burgelman (27:28)

It is a way to have public credit and it is not that difficult. You  can actually say that for example, if you really want to pay tribute to the open science activity of a scientist, bearing in mind that we want this because this is the way science has to do work in the 21st century, then I think that you can very easily come up with a series of indicators that that can measure, that can even measure what, what the scientist is doing, which is regarded as open science.

And for example, you get, you can have an indicator on open access and then within open access, you can calibrate it more downwards to gold and preprint. But you can say, okay, this scientist has the majority of his publications. He really goes for gold open access. He doesn't have to go into open because it puts, it, puts it in preprints and so forth. You can, you can even make it more, even more refined by adding to that. Well, and the number of downloads, which is of course not the same as an impact factor, but then the number of citation impact factor, the number of downloads is also a valid indication.

Stephane (28:32)

So here you're really talking about numbers, indicators,

Burgelman (28:39)

You need numbers, policy needs numbers.

Stephane (28:39)

So what do you say to those who say to be qualitative in its approach, the reward system, rather than quantitative as you were describing?

Burgelman (28:49)

I would say that these are the two sides of the coin. As a policy maker, not only in the commission but also in university, I need to know what is the productivity of a person. I know it is not a word that scientists like, but you need to know is this guy worth something. And you can know that by having a series of indicators on the output side, like number of articles in the, in, in, in top journals and so on, but also number of open access articles, number of open data sets, number of downloads, number of open peer reviews, number of project evaluations. And within the numbers you can have then the hierarchy because just like what you have with the impact factor. It, gives you an indication of the productivity of, of a scientist and that, and there are there I agree needs to be complimented with a number of indicators on the impact side.

It is perfectly possible that an article that I published in, in, in, in a preprint or published in, in a low impact factor journal has been downloaded so many times and used in policy paper so many times. So in terms of scientific excellence, it goes in the classical way. It is called the low in terms of impact, it would be very high. So it needs to be complimented, but it isn't, it's not an either or. It's a, you need both, you need the, and today we only want, what is really complicated today is that there are two things about this. First of all, we only look at one factor in terms of indicator. And secondly, as soon as you start questioning this and coming up with a proposal, you, you, you get the, you get the, you get the reply that, "yes, but this is, this is content that if you need it qualitative, no, you need a much, a much richer quantitative approach complimented with a, with a to be developed qualitative approach". Okay.

Stephane (30:51)

I wanted to ask you one more question before the end. And that is so, you know, some are saying, and I would agree Europe is leading the way. You've talked about the Netherlands. I know that Ghent university for example, is also doing something about a reward system. But some of the critics are saying that the danger is that if Europe or the Netherlands or university leads the way, they're going to somewhat put their scientists in danger because those scientists will be validated on some new indicators. Well, you know, outside, if they want to go in and work, for example, in the US or in China, the evaluation system will be different. So how do you reconcile those, you know, early users or triallers with the rest of the world?

Burgelman (31:44)

First of all, I think it is, it is chicken and egg. It is of course, true that the ideal situation is that, that at some point in time we would have a global agreement on a, on a, on a much more, each richer, all the different qualitative evaluation systems.

Stephane (31:57)

Will that happen?

Burgelman (31:58)

That will never happen. So how do these things change? Well, there are two ways to do it. We can wait until, just like with the Shanghai index. So some Chinese universities come up with a new ranking system and then we will all criticize it. And after a few years, we will do our utmost best to be as high as possible in the ranking because it became the de facto standard because very quickly the top us universities took it over. The second way of, of doing it is that if, if, if, if we would agree with the European university associations here and, and, and it is difficult because we tried it several times in the commission, but if the European university system would agree on an evaluation system which we have discussed and make it standard from let's say 2021 onwards. Well then I'm quite sure it will very quickly get a lot of a lot of copycat and in the rest of the world because you have just like before open science you have exactly the same discussion in the, in the Chinese science system about the dependency on the, on the, on the high impact factor, which is distorting the real value of a scientist. You have exactly the same system, the same discussion in the U S so I would be highly surprised that if Europe still being one of the three power houses science would come up with a concrete and calibrated proposal, the rest of the world would not, would not, would not follow.

And by the way, the mobility in terms of competition is not of that order of magnitude that millions of European researchers would be affected by it if at all. Say the U S would not follow it, then we would not have a fair competition with the us. Well, there are not 10 thousands of European scientists in the U S either. So I think, I think it's my, my, my reading of, of the discussion across the globe is that a proposal by Europe would be taken very serious and would most likely get to get very quickly a global platform.

Stephane (34:00)

Okay. So you're saying to those critics that instead the early goers will have an advantage. So that gives me a lot of good questions actually to bring to the next guests on this this podcast. So Jean-Claude, unfortunately, we already have to stop this this interview. But thank you so much for all your insight. Thank you so much for your time and well I look forward in taking some of your ideas to the next guest then. Thank you very much.

Burgelman (34:30)

Okay. Thank you. And good luck with the rest of the series.

 Giacomo Mancini (34:34)

 Like a growing number in the academic community, Jean-Claude believes we must take a long, hard look at the system we use to measure researcher success. He doesn’t want to see it replaced but expanded to include indicators that will help us build a clearer picture of a researcher’s productivity. And that means including metrics which reflect their open science activities. 

According to Jean-Claude, this will incentivize researchers to invest the time required to comply with open science principles. Crucially, he believes that if Europe is bold enough to develop a new system upon those lines, they won’t be disadvantaged on the world stage – on the contrary, it will only inspire others to follow. 

 Interested in learning more about how open science might develop in the coming 10 years? It was a key theme in Elsevier’s 2019 study, Research futures: drivers and scenarios for the next decade. In fact, one of those scenarios - Brave open world – anticipated the current pandemic… You can download the report from our website. The link is also available in our show notes.

 In future “Can the reward system learn to love open scienceepisodes”, we’ll hear from two researchers – one starting out on their career and one in a senior position. Together with Stephane, they will explore the role of open science and the reward system in their daily lives.  

 Don’t forget to subscribe to Research 2030 so that you are notified when those episodes are released.  

Finally, our thanks to Professor Jean-Claude Burgelman for joining us here on Research 2030 and to Stephane Berghmans for guest hosting this episode.  I’m Giacomo Mancini - thank you for listening. 

 Research 2030 is an official Elsevier podcast.