Open science is the unfettered dissemination of the results, methods and products of scientific research. The National Plan for open science announced in 2018 by the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Frédérique Vidal, has enabled France to develop a coherent and dynamic policy in this area. With this new plan, France is pursuing the ambitious trajectory initiated by the 2016 Law for a Digital Republic and confirmed by the 2020 Research Programming Law, which includes open science in the missions of scientists.

Generalising open science in France 2021-2024

This second National Plan extends its scope to include codes from research, it structures actions in favour of opening up or sharing data through the creation of the Recherche Data Gouv platform, it multiplies the levers of transformation in order to generalise open science practices and it presents disciplinary and thematic variations.  This new National Plan is divided into four areas: 

1. Generalise open access to publications (generalise the obligation to publish in open access, support open access publishing business models, and promote multilingualism)
2. Structuring, sharing and opening up research data (implement the research data dissemination obligation, create Recherche Data Gouv, promote the adoption of a data policy). 
3. Open and promote the source codes produced by the research (promote and support the open source licensing of source codes, highlighting the production of source code, define and promote an open source software policy)
4. Transforming practices to make open science the default principle (develop and enhance open science skills, value open science and the diversity of scientific production in evaluation, triple the budget for open science)

It is about initiating a process of sustainable transformation to make open science the common and shared practice promoted by the entire international higher education, research and innovation ecosystem.

More information

Ministry Brochure

Open Science at CNRS