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International actors that contribute to the open science system.
A wide range of international organisations, agencies, and projects work in different ways to promote open science.
UNESCO is a United Nations agency that promotes international cooperation in education, science, culture, and communication, with the goal of contributing to peace and sustainable development.
UNESCO actively advances open science by leading the development of international standards and policies. Its Recommendation on Open Science, adopted by 194 member states, represents the first global framework for open science. The framework defines common values and principles and proposes actions at multiple levels — from individual researchers to national policy — to make scientific knowledge openly accessible, inclusive, and sustainable. UNESCO also encourages investment in infrastructure, capacity building, and international collaboration, and highlights the importance of open access to publications, data, educational resources, and public engagement with science.
EOSC-A is the organisation responsible for governing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC’s goal is to build a network of FAIR data and services for European research. By linking existing infrastructures and services into a “system of systems,” EOSC aims to provide researchers with improved access to a wide range of data and research outputs. The initiative also seeks to promote data sharing, improve transparency and reproducibility in research, and facilitate transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration. EOSC-A plays a central role in coordinating and guiding the projects and initiatives that together constitute the EOSC ecosystem.
OpenAIRE is a non-profit organisation and e-infrastructure that supports the development of open science in Europe. It implements and coordinates infrastructure, policies, and networks, and contributes actively to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) through its services and expert network, the National Open Access Desks (NOADs).
The organisation operates a wide range of public services that promote open research through interoperability, visibility, and data-driven openness. OpenAIRE also provides guidelines, factsheets, support materials, and training through the NOAD network to help stakeholders make research FAIR and openly accessible.
For researchers, institutions, and funders, OpenAIRE serves as an infrastructural hub for implementing the principles of open science in practice. OpenAIRE is also the organisation behind the Zenodo research repository, which serves as an important “catch-all” archive for European research results and outputs.
Open Research Europe (ORE) is an open publishing platform for researchers with project funding from the European Commission (for example, through Horizon Europe). The platform enables researchers to meet open access publishing requirements without paying author fees. ORE allows for rapid publication through early posting (preprints), followed by an open peer review process that promotes transparency and supports reproducibility. The platform accepts different article types, encourages the publication of both positive and negative results, and adheres to open research data requirements and the FAIR principles. As an integral part of the process, each article is deposited in Zenodo, ensuring long-term preservation, traceability, and reusability.
The European University Association (EUA) is a European network comprising more than eight hundred universities and national university associations from around fifty countries. The network provides a platform for collaboration, exchange of experience, and joint development of higher education and research policy. The organisation’s overarching goal is to strengthen the role of universities in the European knowledge society and to contribute to policy development and capacity building among its members.
EUA promotes open science through its Open Science Agenda 2025, which emphasises three key priority areas: open access to scholarly publications within a fair publishing system, FAIR research data, and responsible research assessment. Through its Open Science Surveys, expert networks, policy recommendations, and capacity-building initiatives, EUA helps universities implement open science at the institutional level.
When a group of national research funding bodies, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), came together to back an initiative to achieve open access to research publications, cOAlition S was born. The coalition is built around Plan S, which aims to achieve full and immediate open access to scholarly publications. In addition to its goal of open access to publications from 2021 onward, Plan S sets out ten principles that the funders joining cOAlition S have committed to uphold.
CoARA is an international coalition of more than seven hundred research-performing organisations, funders, public authorities, and academic associations from across the world. Its aim is to reform research assessment through shared principles and commitments. By changing how research and researchers are evaluated, CoARA seeks to remove one of the main barriers to making open science the norm. The coalition promotes open science by recognising a broader spectrum of research contributions and by fostering fair and inclusive assessment systems that enhance transparency and collaboration.
The Swedish chapter of CoARA brings together universities, research organisations, and funding bodies. It works to remove barriers to, and strengthen incentives for, open science.
DORA is a global initiative and declaration, launched in 2012/2013, that seeks to reform how research performance is evaluated. Its aim is to replace quantitative, journal-based indicators (such as the h-index and Journal Impact Factor) with more nuanced assessments of the quality of research on its own merits. The organisation promotes open science by advocating the recognition of a broader range of research outputs — including datasets, software, and societal impact — in research evaluation and career advancement.
Through Project TARA, DORA provides practical tools such as Reformscape (a comprehensive database of responsible assessment policies) to support institutions in implementing responsible research assessment in practice. Through its principles and resources, DORA advances the adoption of open, fair, and quality-focused evaluation systems.