Creating a successful European Digital Single Market requires open science, open innovation, open scholarship and open infrastructures. Press Release
Three leading experts, John Wood – Association of Commonwealth Universities, Sandra Collins – National Library of Ireland and Kimmo Koski – Finnish IT Center for Science, call for a set of actions and interventions from the European Parliament, in order to support more jobs for Europe, improve democracy and citizen power and exploit innovation. Additionally the Cabinet of Commissioner Günther Oettinger, represented at the meeting by Marlene Holzner, Communication Advisor, emphasized the urgency around the European Supercomputing capacity as a means for processing and exploiting the growing volumes of data, and the financial resources that are necessary to implement the HPC strategy, including paying for the infrastructure required. Ms. Holzner also touched on the imminent European Open Science Cloud with legislative aspects that are very important to bear in mind, which tied well with repeated warnings from John Wood about being careful not regulate what is not yet understood: data regulation can cause serious barriers for innovation and job creation. Open science and open innovation IS and MUST remain a free and global market, and in terms of regulation, it is wiser to proceed in small steps. MEP Henna Virkkunen, sensitive to the recurring theme of trust, reminded participants of the difficult balance between trust and regulation and how politicians fight a constant battle to find the correct balance so as not to overregulate and at the same time ensure a highly competitive European Union. All three speakers underlined that the European Digital Single Market needs joint commitment, collaboration and concrete actions in order to reach the common vision of creating better access for consumers and business to online goods and services across Europe. Clearly, it requires new inventions and research to enable the successful creation of new innovations in Europe. Sustainable infrastructures are key to allow researchers, citizens and society to profit from the scientific data created all over Europe. As MEP Catherine Stihler mentioned, examples from e.g. Great Britain show, that modernizing copyright law to enable text and data mining for research, can be implemented without endangering the commercial rights of the data owners. Now Europe has an opportunity to be the forerunner in creating this unique possibility for new inventions, jobs and prosperity. Concrete actions must be taken to make it happen. Policy and legislation play a key role in enabling the full use of skills and resources through digitalization and open data infrastructures. The key question is: will Europe get its share? Europe’s competitiveness is at stake, so now is the time to act. The key question is: will Europe get its share? Europe’s competitiveness is at stake, so now is the time to act. The clear and decisive request to the European Parliament was to take the following measures: 1. Review and modernise copyright 2. Support a code of conduct for ethical data practice that would build trust in data research 3. Ensure that skills in data processing and data management are sufficiently supported in the DSM 4. Ensure sustainable funding. 5. Support a code of conduct for e-Infrastructure service providers 6. Enable seamless access for researchers to research infrastructures. 7. Support promotion and adoption of common standards and protocols for all resources and digital services. 8. Acknowledge the importance of exploring the societal impact and implications of the Digital Single Market. In her closing remarks, MEP Catherine Stihler underlined how copyright modernisation is an extremely sensitive and difficult issue which really requires a strong drive from the parliament side. She asked all stakeholders to help by sensitising their local MEPs and raise their awareness on how important this is for the success of the European Digital Single Market. The complete statements can be viewed at http://goo.gl/tNuvYc(opens in new window)
Countries
Finland, Ireland, United Kingdom