The radical openness of science and innovation

I n summer 2015, Carlos Moedas—the new European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation—presented his vision for the future of science and innovation in Europe. In doing so, he identified three challenges facing EU member states in the years to come. First, he said that Europe is lagging behind in transferring the results of research into new products and services: too often, new technologies that are developed in Europe are commercialized elsewhere. Second, Europe needs to improve the quality of its research output: although the EU generates more scientific results and publications than any other region in the world, it does not capture a proportional share of high-impact or highly cited landmark publications. Third, he noted that Europe punches below its weight in international science and science diplomacy: Europe’s voice should be more actively raised in global debates. Recent discussions and moratoria about gain-of-function experiments in virology or about modifying the human germ line confirm the Commissioner’s point: they are mostly initiated and driven by US researchers, and the USA is still the most influential country in terms of international science policy debates. In order to meet these challenges, Commissioner Moedas proposed three strategic priorities: “Open Innovation,” “Open Science” and “Openness to the World” [1]. Open Innovation consists of policy measures intended to speed up the commercialization of research by introducing novel funding sources and modes of investment. Open Science, the Commissioner believes, is the key to increasing excellence, which he hopes will spread from the European Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions programme to the rest of Horizon 2020. Concrete policy measures in this regard are a call for a European Science Cloud Project and support for open access publishing to make the results of research immediately available without any constraints. Finally, Openness to the World will comprise a wide spectrum of scientific and political initiatives intended to meet the major social, health and environmental problems faced by humankind. ...................................................... “. . . science, especially basic science, is in itself more radically open towards the future when it is free to explore the vast domain of the yet unknown” ......................................................