The Open Science Steering Committee, the decision-making body of the Open Science Committee, will launch a call for projects in September for actions in favour of scientific publishing and publication. This call has a budget of €2.6 million, part of the €3.1 million from the National Open Science Fund (FNSO). It is to be used to develop bibliodiversity and some of the resources may be allocated to international projects accredited by SCOSS, the international coalition for the sustainable development of open scientific services.
It is aimed at three types of actors: research infrastructures included in the national roadmap and associated with a publishing activity; digital platforms, private or public, which are not included in the roadmap; and any editorial initiative, private or public, concerning journals or books with a transition to open access.

The remaining €500,000 is earmarked for the modernisation of the open HAL archive. It is in addition to an exceptional allocation of 650,000 euros from the CNRS.

The €3.1 million granted to the FNSO for 2019 comes from the State up to €2 million, savings made after negotiations with the publisher Elsevier for €1 million and savings made by Inria on subscriptions for €100,000. The breakdown of the use of the FNSO into two actions was decided by the Steering Committee.

The projects will be evaluated by a panel of experts and selected by the Steering Committee. They must undertake to comply with the exemplary criteria published by the Open Science Committee.

Frédérique Vidal had announced the creation of the National Open Science Fund as part of the National Open Science Plan in July 2018. It is funded by ministerial allocations and voluntary contributions from institutions of higher education, research and innovation, as well as contributions from foundations and patrons.

The Fund complements the support for open science provided by the €2.3 million ANR Flash Science ouverte call, which focuses on research data. It is also in addition to the Support Plan for French scientific journals, whose objective is to promote “the maintenance and adaptation to digital technology of a high-quality, dynamic and competitive edition of French scientific journals”. Established following the 2016 Law for a Digital Republic, it has 16.7 million euros available over five years. This plan is monitored and evaluated by the Scientific Publishing Monitoring Committee.

Read the press release from the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.