April 10, 2020
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
COVID-19 outbreak: French government requests full open access to scientific publications and data from French research – Find out how with the CeRIS
To create the best possible conditions for the extraordinary effort being mounted by the French research community, the circulation of all scientific information needs to be facilitated to enable significant breakthroughs to be made, especially with respect to improving treatment for patients. The French Ministry of Solidarity and Health and Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation have therefore called for free public access to all publications and also to any data related to research being conducted on the COVID-19 outbreak in France.
The Institut Pasteur's Scientific Secretariat General and Scientific Information Resources Center (CeRIS) are offering support and guidance to help you comply with this mandatory requirement.
- COVID-19 and open science: guidance from the CeRIS
There are four possible approaches:
1) Disseminate results in advance via open pre-publication platforms
You can submit your pre-publications to bioRxiv or medRxiv.
2) Submit a full-text version of any accepted publications to an open archive as soon as possible. Publishing in open access journals is strongly encouraged
Scientific articles published on an open access basis must be published in one of the journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Any articles accepted for publication (even those published in open access journals) should be submitted to HAL-Pasteur.
Contact hal-pasteur@pasteur.fr if you have any questions or need help submitting an article.
3) Share the protocols and provisional data, followed by the final data, in compliance with applicable regulations (GDPR)
Sharing protocols and data publicly involves submitting them to a data warehouse. There are specific warehouses for the different research fields (immunology, computer modeling, clinical trials, etc.).
The CeRIS can help you find an appropriate one. If you have any questions, contact pgd@pasteur.fr.
Please note: Before sharing data, you must make sure that they can in no way be used to identify any individuals involved in your research, directly or indirectly. Contact dpo@pasteur.fr if you have any questions about GDPR.
4) Draw up a Data Management Plan, keep it updated and send it to the funding body
The CeRIS can help you draw up a Data Management Plan (DMP). Consult the dedicated Webcampus page created by the CeRIS for information on how to write your DMP. If you have any more questions or would like someone to read over your DMP, feel free to contact pgd@pasteur.fr.
- COVID-19 and open science: stay informed with the CeRIS
The Scientific Information Resources Center (CeRIS) publishes a newsletter about open science twice a month. To keep you up to date with all the latest news, the CeRIS is publishing a special "COVID-19 and Open Science" newsletter to report on the way in which the coronavirus crisis is bringing about a shift in the research community towards more openness and transparency:
• Find out more about the call to open up access to publications and share data;
• Get to grips with new research publication practices via pre-publication servers;
• Read the interesting viewpoint of a professor from the Université de Montréal who is skeptical of publishers embracing open access during the crisis.
To find out more, consult the "COVID-19 and Open Science" newsletter
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