April 16, 2024 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.

10958522
INDEX

Preamble 1

Commitments 2

Annex A: Background and context 4

Annex B: Definitions 8
PREAMBLE
Vast amounts of information are being used to manage the research enterprise, from information
about research actors and their activities to information about inputs and outputs in the research
process and signals of the use, esteem, and societal impact of research. This information often
plays a vital role in the distribution of resources and the evaluation of researchers and institutions.
Research performing and research funding organizations use this information to set strategic
priorities. The information is also indispensable for researchers and societal stakeholders to find and
assess relevant research outputs.

However, a large share of all research information is locked inside proprietary infrastructures. It is
managed by companies that are accountable primarily to their shareholders, not to the research
community. As research community, we have become strongly reliant on closed infrastructures. We
have ended up assessing researchers and institutions based on non-transparent evidence. We are
monitoring and incentivizing open science using closed data. We are also routinely making decisions
based on information that is biased against less privileged languages, geographical regions, and
research agendas. To advance responsible research assessment and open science and to promote
unbiased high-quality decision making, there is an urgent need to make research information openly
available through open scholarly infrastructures. Openness of research information must be the new
norm.

We, the undersigned, believe that the research information landscape requires fundamental change.
We commit to taking a lead in reforming the landscape and transforming our practices. To this end,
we commit to (1) making openness of research information the default, (2) working with services
and systems that support and enable open research information, (3) supporting the sustainability of
infrastructures for open research information, and (4) working together to realize the transition from
closed to open research information.

These four commitments are presented below. Further background and context is provided in Annex
A. Definitions of key concepts can be found in Annex B.

1
COMMITMENTS
As organizations that carry out, fund, and evaluate research, we commit to the following:

1
We will make openness the default for the research information
we use and produce

• Openness will be the norm for the research information we use, for instance to assess
researchers and institutions, to support strategic decision making, and to find relevant
research outputs.

• Openness will be the norm for the research information we produce, for instance
information about our activities and outputs, with an exception for information for which
openness would be inappropriate (‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’).

2
We will work with services and systems that support
and enable open research information

• For publishing services and platforms, we will require that research information generated
in publication processes (e.g., metadata of research articles and other outputs) be made
openly available through open scholarly infrastructures, using standard protocols and
identifiers where available.

• For systems and platforms for the internal management of research information
(e.g., current research information systems), we will require that all relevant research
information can be exported and made open, using standard protocols and identifiers
where available.

2
 3
We will support the sustainability of infrastructures
for open research information

• We take responsibility for supporting infrastructures for open research information,

for instance by participating in community building and community governance and
by providing fair and equitable contributions to the financial stability and development
of these infrastructures.

• We expect the infrastructures that we support to implement good practices for

community governance and sustainability (e.g., Principles of Open Scholarly
Infrastructure).

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We will support collective action to accelerate the transition
to openness of research information

• We recognize the importance of sharing experiences and coordinating action to

promote a system-wide transition from closed to open research information.

• To facilitate this, we support establishing a Coalition for Open Research Information

and strengthening collaboration with other related initiatives and organizations.

3
ANNEX A
BACKGROUND AND
CONTEXT
Closed research information leads to black-box decision making

Too often, decision making in science is based on closed research information. Information is
locked inside proprietary infrastructures run by for-profit providers that impose severe restrictions
on the use and reuse of the information. Errors, gaps, and biases in closed research information
are difficult to expose and even more difficult to fix. Indicators and analytics derived from this
information lack transparency and reproducibility. Decisions about the careers of researchers,
about the future of research organizations, and ultimately about the way science serves the
whole of humanity, depend on these black-box indicators and analytics. Without open research
information, it is difficult, if not impossible, to scrutinize these indicators and analytics and to have
an informed debate about their strengths and weaknesses. Basic standards of accountability
cannot be met, and academic sovereignty is at risk.

There are many closed research information infrastructures. Well-known examples are the
Web of Science and Scopus databases, which play an important role in research assessment
and resource allocation in many countries. These databases provide metadata for scientific
publications (e.g., title, abstract, journal, authors, author affiliations, funders, etc.), but they
impose severe restrictions on the use of this metadata and make the metadata available only to
organizations that pay hefty subscription fees. Indicators and analytics based on these databases
(e.g., publication and citation statistics, journal impact factors, university rankings, etc.) lack
transparency and reproducibility.

4
Transparent high-quality decision making requires open research information

At a time when decision making in science is increasingly guided by indicators and analytics,
addressing the problems of closed research information must be a top priority. Decisions
should be informed by open research information: information that is free to access, without
restrictions on how it can be used and reused. To enable linking of information from different
sources, open research information should make use of persistent identifiers such as DOIs
(Digital Object Identifiers), ORCIDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs), and ROR (Research
Organization Registry) IDs to reference research outputs, researchers, research organizations,
and other entities. Infrastructures for open research information should be governed by relevant
stakeholders in the academic community.

Openness of research information ensures that all stakeholders have full access to information
that is of relevance to them. This is vital for high-quality decision making in science. It also
enables information from different sources to be linked and integrated, so that decision making
can take full advantage of all available information and can be based on a diversity of perspectives
and an inclusive understanding of the issues at stake. In addition, when researchers or research
organizations perform additional data curation, the enriched information resulting from this can
again be shared openly, enabling everyone to benefit from it. In a research assessment context,
openness of research information guarantees that not only those performing an assessment but
also those being assessed have access to all ‘evidence’ considered in the assessment, offering
the transparency and accountability that are crucial to foster responsible assessment practices.

Support for open research information is rapidly increasing

The importance of openness of research information is widely recognized, for instance by the
research assessment reform movement. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
(DORA), supported by about 3000 organizations and over 20,000 individuals globally, calls on
publishers to “remove all reuse limitations on reference lists in research articles and make them

5
available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication”. The Leiden Manifesto for
research metrics advises that researchers who are being evaluated should always be able “to
verify data and analysis”. The EU Council has adopted conclusions on research assessment and
implementation of open science stating “that data and bibliographic databases used for research
assessment should, in principle, be openly accessible and that tools and technical systems
should enable transparency”. The more than 600 organizations that have joined the Coalition
for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) have signed an agreement that emphasizes
the need to ensure “independence and transparency of the data, infrastructure and criteria
necessary for research assessment and for determining research impacts”. A large number
of organizations and individuals in Latin America and the Caribbean have signed a declaration
highlighting the importance of “initiatives and pronouncements against commercial barriers that
limit access and participation in relation to scientific information”. The declaration stresses that
research assessment should use “databases which reflect both the production disseminated in
international repositories as well as that which is included in regional and local databases”.

Going beyond research assessment, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition) warns that “complex infrastructure that is critical to conducting the end-to-end business
of the university” is increasingly owned by companies that “can invisibly and strategically
influence, and perhaps exert control, over key university decisions”. In its roadmap for action,
SPARC advises research organizations to respond by identifying “a structured set of principles
that represent a foundation and a compass for action” and by operating in more coordinated and
aligned ways.

In line with this recommendation, the academic community in the Netherlands has developed
guiding principles for open research information. These principles aim to “open up research
metadata and data analytics”, which is essential “to cope with the increasing commercial
development across the entire research life cycle without transparency or clarity on whether this
supports the interests of the research community”.

Openness of research information, and specifically of publication metadata, has also been
promoted by the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) and the Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA) as
well as the Metadata 20/20 initiative. Likewise, the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability,

6
and Reusability) principles have played a crucial role in advancing the availability of open
metadata for research data. In its Recommendation on Open Science, UNESCO highlights the
importance of “open bibliometrics and scientometrics systems for assessing and analysing
scientific domains”. A growing number of infrastructures for open research information have also
adopted the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure.

Supported by the above developments, research information is increasingly made openly

available. A number of open research information infrastructures for instance offer alternatives
to closed databases. In addition to infrastructures provided by organizations such as Crossref,
DataCite, and ORCID, this also includes ‘aggregator’ infrastructures such as OpenAlex,
OpenCitations, and OpenAIRE, as well as discipline-specific infrastructures such as PubMed and
Europe PMC, and local and national infrastructures such as La Referencia, SciELO, and Redalyc.

We are getting close to a tipping point in the transition from closed to open research information.
But to reach this tipping point, more concerted action is needed. We therefore call on all
organizations that carry out, fund, and evaluate research to support the transition to open
research information and to sign the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information.

7
 ANNEX B
DEFINITIONS
Research information

By research information we mean information (sometimes referred to as metadata) relating

to the conduct and communication of research. This includes, but is not limited to, (1)
bibliographic metadata such as titles, abstracts, references, author data, affiliation data, and
data on publication venues, (2) metadata on research software, research data, samples, and
instruments, (3) information on funding and grants, and (4) information on organizations
and research contributors. Research information is located in systems such as bibliographic
databases, software archives, data repositories, and current research information systems.

Open research information

By open research information we mean research information that is free to access and free
of restrictions on reuse. Openness of research information is a spectrum, not an absolute.
Just like research data should ideally adhere to the FAIR principles for Findability, Accessibility,
Interoperability, and Reusability, open research information should ideally also follow these
principles. If the highest levels of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability are
realized, research information is both open and FAIR. This for instance requires:

• The use of standardized protocols and persistent identifiers to support high levels of
Findability and Interoperability

• Lodging of metadata in widely used repositories and transfer systems to support Findability
and Accessibility

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• The application of a Creative Commons CC0 waiver or public domain dedication as
appropriate to support Interoperability and Reusability

• Transparency of processing and provenance to support Interoperability and Reusability

• The use of infrastructures that provide standard and open interfaces

Research information that cannot be ethically shared, including information that has
privacy implications, should not be made open. In some cases, aggregated forms of privacy
implicating research information can be made open. However, this should be assessed on a
case by case basis in the context of relevant regulations and legal requirements.

Publishing

By publishing we mean the act of making the outputs of research generally available for
consumption, use, and critique. This includes, but is not limited to, the formal publication
of textual outputs such as journal articles or scholarly books, the posting of reports and
other non-peer-reviewed outputs, and the sharing of research data and research software
through appropriate repositories. It may also include the release of creative works, including
sculpture, visual art, film or video, or other artifacts, where they are intended to represent or
communicate the results of a research process.

It is intended that the meaning of publishing includes cases where the audience is limited, for
instance where access is limited to subscribers, but does not include private and confidential
reports or other documents that are not intended for general circulation. Publishing is separate
to archival, where the intent is long term preservation. Some, but not all, publishing platforms
also support archival through the publishing process.

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Scholarly infrastructures

By scholarly infrastructures we mean infrastructures through which research information

is shared. A precise definition of infrastructures is challenging. A key characteristic of
infrastructures is that they are foundational. For instance, they are used by a diversity of actors
for differing purposes, other systems depend on them, and they are built to be shared by a
community of users. Another characteristic of infrastructures is that they are not visible to end
users of services, with dependencies only becoming clear when infrastructures fail.

Open scholarly infrastructures

By open scholarly infrastructures we mean scholarly infrastructures that provide trustworthy

assurances of openness, community accountability, stability, transparency, and reliability.
A commitment to adhere to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), with
regular updates on performance and improvements, provides a means by which a scholarly
infrastructure can provide assurances to the community that it qualifies for the level of trust
accorded to an open scholarly infrastructure.

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BARCELONA
DECLARATION ON
OPEN RESEARCH
INFORMATION
www.barcelona-declaration.org

The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information was prepared by a group

of over 25 research information experts, representing organizations that carry
out, fund, and evaluate research, as well as organizations that provide research
information infrastructures. The group met in Barcelona in November 2023 in a
workshop hosted by SIRIS Foundation. The preparation of the Declaration was
coordinated by Bianca Kramer (Sesame Open Science), Cameron Neylon (Curtin
Open Knowledge Initiative, Curtin University), and Ludo Waltman (Centre for Science
and Technology Studies, Leiden University). Organizations that would like to know
more about the Declaration or that wish to sign the Declaration are welcome to
reach out to [email protected]

Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information