L-R: Marc Schiltz, Secretary General of FNR, President of Science Europe; Monique Kieffer, Director of BnL; Jean-Claude Burgelman, Open Access Envoy from the European Commission (DG RTD);
Credit: BnL
From 20-23 October 2019, the Luxembourg Consortium Section of the National Library of Luxembourg (BnL) hosted the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), which manages electronic resources for libraries, research centres and universities.
The symposium, organised in collaboration with the National Research Fund (FNR), brought together 114 participants from 31 different countries. Among the guests were Marc Schiltz, Secretary General of the FNR and President of Science Europe, Jean-Claude Burgelman, who is responsible for open science and data policies of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) at the European Commission, and Monique Kieffer, Director of the BnL.
This symposium allowed for an exchange of ideas regarding the many challenges that digital and scientific infrastructure managers are facing in the digital age. Several projects were presented, such as the ezMetrics "easy-metrics" project, which is a collaboration between the BnL on the one hand and the Institut de l'information scientifique et technique (INIST-CNRS) in Nancy and Couperin, the French Consortium for access to digital publications. ezMetrics is based on the evaluation of the use of digital content under licence, the monitoring of reading activities with traditional publishers and open access platforms. The project allows a better structured data analysis.
In addition, participants learned about a pilot project between the BnL, the FNR and the company Chronos, which aims to transform the scientific publication process by connecting institutions and publishers with an automated management tool. The BnL will manage the FNR's Open Access resources in a centralised manner and will proceed to the automated collection of data on Luxembourg scientific publications. This project will help the BnL to efficiently carry out its long-term digital preservation missions. The three parties signed an agreement on 22 October 2019 in this context.
Among the highlights of the symposium was the presentation of the "Research Output Manager" tool, which is the result of a 15-month collaboration between the BnL and the Danish start-up ConsortiaManager. The tool enables the management and modelling of all payment flows between researchers and publishers for the dissemination of scientific publications. It includes new publishing processes, such as Open Access.
These innovative projects, as presented at the ICOLC in Luxembourg, are aimed at enabling scientific institutes, research centres and libraries to develop the path to Open Science (scientific research accessible to all) thanks to free consultation via the web (Open Access).
