My short German text on a vision of „Europe in 2051: An Open Innovation Ecosystem for All“ has been used by our European University Alliance Arqus as a vision for Open Science:
Petra Schaper Rinkel 2022 „Vision: A future with Open Science“ in: Kaier, Christian, Walter, Hildrun et al (2022). Arqus Openness Position Paper (1.0). Zenodo. Page 5-6 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5881903
The year is 2051. Europe and its knowledge society are thriving thanks to its OS and innovation system. In many of Europe‘s major and growing cities, clusters of well-funded, internationally renowned universities – of which the European University Alliances have formed the core – are flourishing in strong partnerships with regional and global institutions. Education is still the basis for innovation, but it is also central to the overall quality of life as working hours continue to decline. Thanks to Open Education, lifelong learning is available to all: course modules shared within university clusters, online and artificial intelligence-based teaching enable individuals to participate and to engage as critical citizens. To solve global problems, citizens, businesses, universities, and many new players – foundations, NGOs – collaborate in flexible global networks.
Research outputs from universities and public research institutions are distributed online, free of cost. Free access to research results – Open Access – has become a matter of course, as has research data shared as openly as possible and according to FAIR principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability). A culture of research based on Open Peer Review and Open Research Assessment helps researchers to produce high-quality research proposals and publications. These assessment mechanisms have also significantly expanded the understanding of excellence to include impact in terms of societal challenges. Through Open Research Agenda Setting, relevant new research fields and emerging challenges become rapidly visible in a transdisciplinary way. These practices of Open Scholarship could only become effective because Europe has widely promoted open, shared infrastructures at public universities that support collaboration between research, industry and citizens. Open, interconnected infrastructures have emerged from the beginnings of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and form the basis for the network of open European platforms on which collaboration between research institutions, universities, public services, business, industry and citizens takes place.
Until the 2020s, European innovators of the digital transformation and the research community were dependent on the operating systems and platforms of a few global companies and had to submit to their framework conditions. Today, researchers and innovators are continuously evolving their own frameworks in an open, interoperable innovation ecosystem. The impact of this paradigm shift and the development of scalable, open source-based infrastructures has been enormous since the late 2020s: open and public digital infrastructures and platforms have enabled public sector data to be available in real time to researchers, infrastructure providers, industry and citizens. This has fostered rapidly- evolving, high quality and sustainable research and its application to societal challenges, such as inclusion and the decarbonised economy.
Fees and taxes for networked, open platforms of communication and commerce in Europe are far lower today than they were when European businesses and consumers were dependent on private global platforms. The public, open, science-based innovation ecosystems in Europe have driven Open Innovation forward and given new players the chance to develop their ideas together and lead them to success. This in turn has increased tax revenue in Europe and has enabled extensive redistribution, thus promoting inclusion and expanding provision of public research, education and health services.
Openness has become a defining feature of science. The underlying idea has become more powerful than ever: theories, concepts, results, and data represent a common good of humanity, freely shared to innovate, enjoy, and benefit. OS is an interactive pursuit from which no one is excluded and to which everyone can contribute, and from which everyone can benefit without diminishing the benefits to others.