OPERAS joins European organisations in call to strengthen Open Science across the European Research Area
OPERAS has joined ALLEA, EIFL, IFLA, LIBER and SPARC Europe in issuing a joint statement on Open Science, in the context of the consultation on the European Research Area Act. Together, the six organisations represent thousands of European universities, research-performing organisations, libraries, scholarly infrastructures and academies of sciences and humanities.
The statement recognises the significant progress made in recent years through the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, the European Council Conclusions and national Open Science policies. However, it also stresses that Open Science still faces persistent financial, linguistic and geographic inequalities, which continue to limit equitable participation in, and access to, the European research ecosystem.
For OPERAS, this discussion is central to the future of scholarly communication in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Open Science must not be reduced to access to publications alone, nor treated as a purely technical or administrative process. It must also address the diversity of research practices, languages, publication cultures and community needs that shape knowledge production across Europe.
The ERA Act represents an opportunity to accelerate progress through coordinated policy action. At the same time, the statement underlines that legislation alone will not be sufficient. Achieving Open Science requires a broader mobilisation of actors, infrastructures and incentives, including policy alignment, sustainable funding, open and community-governed services, responsible research assessment and stronger support for multilingualism and bibliodiversity.
The full joint statement is available on Zenodo.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
OPERAS Editorial Team (May 27, 2026). OPERAS joins European organisations in call to strengthen Open Science across the European Research Area. OPERAS. Retrieved June 10, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/16a8g

