On 4 June, among with other organizations, the YAE has endorsed an open letter prepared by the ‘Research Matters’ initiative and advocating for the strengthening of funding for research and innovation in Europe. More details about the open letter and its other signatories (various academies, universities and associations) are available here.
Academic freedom is the basis for reliable, trustworthy research and education, and is a crucial core principle also for early and mid-career researchers. As a follow-up of the meeting of the European Network of Young Academies (ENYAs) in May 2023, where YAE was represented by Anna Kuppuswamy (Selection Committee, Vice-Chair), the YAE signed the Stockholm Charter on Academic Freedom which has been launched on 24 January 2024.
The Young Academy of Europe along with 29 other transnational and national young academies and associations joined the initiative led by the Global Young Academy to release “A Call for Action from Young Academies and Young Associations: Reaffirming the Role of Fundamental Sciences in Achieving Sustainable Development through Enhanced and Equitable Support of Fundamental Research and Early- to Mid-Career Researchers”. The statement was officially released on 15 December at the closing ceremony of UNESCO’s International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development 2022-2023.
Recruitment Chair of YAE, Mona Simion, is chairing the Working Group on Researchers’ Careers of the Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), and thus was leading the preparation of ISE’s Opinion Paper on the Proposal for a European Framework for Research Careers.
The Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE) has just released a response to the European Commission’s concept letter, announced in July 2023, to establish a ‘Research and Innovation Careers Observatory’ (ReICO). As a representative of YAE in the ISE Working Group on Research Careers, Mona Simion (YAE recruitement Vice-chair), and YAE Chair Moniek Tromp in her capacity of ISE executive board member, took part in preparing the document, which raises several concerns with the original draft. For more details see the original ISE statement here.
The YAE was involved in the organising committee of the 4th Gago Conference on European Science Policy, held on June 13 2022, through our board member Dr. Katalin Solymosi. The GAGO conference brought together in Brussels and online research institutions, policy makers and representatives of early career researchers’ associations. It was organised by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), Ciencia Viva (Portugal) and ISE, with the support of the French Presidency of Council of the European Union.
The Conference was organised a conference to cover the dramatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early-career researchers. From this conference, a manifesto for early-career researchers was produced, which has been endorsed by YAE.
From the ISE website, the manifesto calls for:
More details on the manifesto, to download it and to endorse it, please visit the ISE website following this link.
On 9th September 2022, the Young Academy of Europe, together with the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc), the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), the International Consortium of Research Staff Associations (ICoRSA), and the Global Young Academy (GYA), published a joint statement on the EU Council conclusions on Research Assessment and the Implementation of Open Science, and multilingualism.
In this joint statement, these early-career researcher organisations support the Council’s vision, and offer our views on the implementation of these conclusions. The joint statement is publicly available on Zenodo:
Eurodoc, MCAA, YAE, ICoRSA, & GYA. (2022). Joint Statement on the EU Council conclusions on Research Assessment and the Implementation of Open Science. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7066808
The YAE supports the Stick to Science online signature campaign. This initiative has been set up to call for an open and inclusive European Research Area (ERA), and urges the EU, UK and Switzerland to reach association agreements so that the two countries can continue to contribute scientifically and financially to Horizon Europe and the ERA.
You can learn more about the campaign, and sign up as an individual and/or an organisation on the Stick to Science website: https://stick-to-science.eu/
Brussels, 17 February 2020. Please reference the joint statement using:
http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3669124
European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc), Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), and Young Academy of Europe (YAE), who together represent researchers at all career stages across Europe and abroad, call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that publicly funded scientific knowledge can circulate freely without embargoes or restrictions to accelerate discovery, strengthen European research, and to tackle global challenges.
Uniform legislation on a European level would harmonise and clarify rules by removing barriers which today prevent scientific knowledge from circulating freely in all of Europe. This could take the form of a directive establishing the nonwaivable legal right for researchers to share publicly funded peer-reviewed research findings without embargo periods or other restrictions (e.g. on the use of open licenses). Several related examples of national legislation that can act as inspiration already exist across Europe, including in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.
By establishing this legal right, researchers will be able to publish in any journal or outlet and still comply with open access mandates such as ‘Plan S’ by following the ‘repository route’, as this right would supersede any restrictive policies some publishers may have. It thus will ensure that any researcher in Europe who wishes to deposit their author-accepted manuscript in an open access repository without an embargo and using an open license will always have the legal right to do so. We believe that such legislation would greatly benefit researchers, science, and broader society.
Signed by Eva Hnátková (President, Eurodoc), Matthew DiFranco (Chair, MCAA), and Mangala Srinivas (Chair, Young Academy of Europe (YAE) on 17 February 2020. This statement is released under a CC BY license. Contact: chair@yacadeuro.org.
Appendix on European legislative context
The Board of the Young Academy of Europe wrote a brief and supportive statement in response to a consultation by the European Commission on the future of scholarly publishing. The stakeholder statements have now been published:
In January 2019, the European Commission published the “Future of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication”, a report by the H2020 Commission Expert Group on the Future of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication. The report examines the current system – with its strengths and weaknesses, the actors involved in it and proposes a vision for the future.
A select number of stakeholders mainly participating in the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP), and a few more organizations that complemented the configuration of OSPP, were invited to participate in the consultation. Additional organizations offered to participate in the consultation themselves (Annex A, list of consulted organizations). The consultation was sent to 32 organizations, 17 of which responded, representing research institutions, academic/learned societies, early career researcher associations, funders, and publishers. The consultation lasted between February and May 2019.
