[TYPES] Policy news from France: the new national plan for open science with concrete measures for open access and software

[Roberto Di Cosmo]

Dear all,
   I am delighted to share great news from France: on July 6th, the French
Ministry of Research unveiled the second multi-annual National Plan for
Open Science, which is a landmark policy document.

The official document is available online from the website of the French
Ministry of Research
<https://cache.media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/science_ouverte/20/9/MEN_brochure_PNSO_web_1415209.pdf>,
with an unofficial (and perfectible) english translation available at
https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/second-national-plan-for-open-science/ (an
official English version will be available in a few weeks from the Ministry
of Resarch dedicated page
<https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid159131/le-plan-national-pour-la-science-ouverte-2021-2024-vers-une-generalisation-de-la-science-ouverte-en-france.html>
).

For our community, I believe two parts of this plan are particularly
interesting: section 1, that contains important concrete provisions to
foster Open Access; and section 3, that squarely puts software on a par
with publications and data in research and Open Science, and announces a
number of measures designed to open up research software and better
recognize software development in research.

Here are some significant measures that are announced for research
publications (section 1 of the plan):

   - achieve 100% open access publications by 2030
   - support Diamond open access publishing
   - request that the data and code associated with the article texts
   submitted be provided
   - promote the use of narrative CVs to reduce the importance of
   quantitative assessments to the benefit of qualitative ones

Here are some highlights of the measures related to software (section 3 of
the plan):

   - a clear recommendation to make research software available under an
   open source licence, unless there are strong reasons not to do so
   - the creation of a high level expert group dedicated to research
   software in the National Committee for Open Science
   - the objective to achieve better recognition of software development in
   career evaluation for researchers and engineers
   - a renewed and strengthened official support of Software Heritage
   <https://www.softwareheritage.org/>, with a recommendation to archive in
   it *all research software produced in France* (a simple HOWTO is
   available at
   https://www.softwareheritage.org/howto-archive-and-reference-your-code/)
   - a plan to get an ISO standard for the Software Heritage intrinsic
   identifiers
   <https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/07/09/intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-identifiers/>
    for source code [1]

To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time that such an organic,
clearly designed strategy for (open source) software in research is laid
out in an official government-level document.

--
Roberto

[1] these identifiers (aka SWHID
<https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/05/13/swhid-adoption/>) allow  to
pinpoint inside the archive any software artifact, down to the level of the
line of code. For example, here is a *nice fragment in the Apollo 11 source
code
<https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:cnt:1baf1ca1d5d06dd4518520d89482ff94c02dfbae;origin=https:/github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11;visit=swh:1:snp:7c00bec40f5e077e0d7acf92aaa4aaa63cd5d71b;anchor=swh:1:rev:422050965990dfa8ad1ffe4ae92e793d7d1ddae5;path=/Luminary099/BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc;lines=53-72/>*
and
here is *a mythical routine in the Quake III Arena source code
<https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:cnt:bb0faf6919fc60636b2696f32ec9b3c2adb247fe;origin=https:/github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena;visit=swh:1:snp:4ab9bcef131aaf449a7c01370aff8c91dcecbf5f;anchor=swh:1:rev:dbe4ddb10315479fc00086f08e25d968b4b43c49;path=/code/game/q_math.c;lines=546-579/>*
*. *For a short demo, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nlSvYh7VpI (the
interesting part starts around 9:00)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Science Professor
           (on leave at Inria from IRIF/Université de Paris)

Director
Software Heritage             E-mail : roberto at dicosmo.org
INRIA                            Web : http://www.dicosmo.org
Bureau C328                  Twitter : http://twitter.com/rdicosmo
2, Rue Simone Iff                Tel : +33 1 80 49 44 42
CS 42112
75589 Paris Cedex 12
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