Science 2.0 consultation & status report Science in Transition

The European Commission opened a public consultation about Science 2.0 under the heading ‘Science in Transition’. The goal of the consultation is to better understand the full societal potential of ‘Science 2.0’ as well as the desirability of any possible policy action.

“‘Science 2.0’ describes the on-going evolution in the modus operandi of doing research and organising science. These changes in the dynamics of science and research are enabled by digital technologies and driven by the globalisation of the scientific community, as well as the need to address the Grand Challenges of our times. They have an impact on the entire research cycle, from the inception of research to its publication, as well as on the way in which this cycle is organised.”

Go to the consultation website.

Science 2.0 encompasses, according to the European Commission: a significant increase of scientific production; a new data-intensive way of doing science; and an increase in the number of actors in science and addressees of science. The latter for example means citizen involvement in the scientific endeavour, which “contributes to furthering interactive processes of knowledge utilisation and knowledge valorisation and to making research more relevant to society”.

In the chapter “Science in Transition: evolving debates and activities in the Member States of the European Union” the European Commission explicitly refers to the Dutch debate. “In the Netherlands, an intensive debate has evolved on the basis of a position-paper entitled ‘Science in Transition’. The ongoing debate in the Netherlands addressed, among other, the issue of the use of bibliometrics in relation to the determination of scientific careers. However this debate went actually beyond the scope of what is described in this consultation paper as ‘Science 2.0′ and included also discussions on the democratisation of the research agenda, the science-policy interface and calls for making research more socially relevant.”

Also: Science in Transition reports progress and status since November 2013
The June 2014 status report from Science in Transition is available in English. Read more on the status report here and download the pdf.

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