Background to the Swedish transition
In Sweden, the transition to open science has taken place gradually. With the 2016 and 2020 research policy bills, objectives and responsibilities were set out, particularly for how the transition should be monitored and evaluated. The national guidelines for open science, published in 2024, set out the national direction, and the transition is also being coordinated with European initiatives.
From open access to an open science system
Sweden’s transition to open science has developed gradually, from an early focus on open access to scientific publications and research data to a broader understanding of how research is conducted, shared, and used. The 2016 research policy bill set out the objective that research results produced using public funds should be made openly accessible, subject to considerations such as privacy, security, and intellectual property rights. This development has since been reinforced through international initiatives and EU research programmes, in which open access, the FAIR principles, and the sharing of research data have become increasingly important elements of research policy.
Further clarification in the 2020 research policy bill
The 2020 research policy bill specified the objectives for the transition in greater detail. It states that, by 2021, scientific publications that are wholly or partly funded by public funds should be made immediately openly accessible. The transition to open access to research data is to be completed by 2026. At the same time, the perspective was broadened from access to individual research outputs to the development of an open science system, which also includes open-source software, open educational resources, public participation, and further-developed incentive systems.
Allocation of responsibilities across actors
The organisation of Sweden’s transition to open science began to take clearer shape after the 2016 research policy bill. From 2017, the Swedish Research Council was given responsibility for national coordination of work on open access to research data, while the National Library of Sweden was given the corresponding coordination responsibility for open access to scientific publications. The National Library of Sweden has subsequently also been tasked with monitoring the costs of scholarly publishing and supporting a national platform for Swedish scholarly journals available through open access. At the same time, universities play a central role in practical implementation, including through local policies, support for data management and publishing, training, infrastructure, and library-based research support. SUHF’s roadmap and guidance have become important tools for clarifying the responsibilities of higher education institutions and putting the national direction into practice.
Consolidation in 2024: guidelines, infrastructure, and research assessment
During the 2020s, the transition has broadened further and become more clearly linked to governance, infrastructure, and research assessment. The national guidelines for open science, published by the National Library of Sweden in 2024, set out the national direction through to 2030 and highlight six priority areas: open access to publications, open access to research data, open research methods, open educational resources, public participation, and infrastructures that support open science. The 2024 research and innovation bill continues to emphasise the need for digital research infrastructure, the FAIR principles, and coordination with European initiatives such as EOSC. At the same time, it underlines that the transition requires responsible handling of legal, ethical, and security-related limitations, as well as incentives and research assessment practices that support open ways of working. In this context, CoARA and the Swedish CoARA chapter are examples of initiatives aimed at developing research assessment in line with open science.