Portugal

The Portuguese Government and the MCTES have defined as a priority the commitment of science to the Principles and Practices of Open Science.  Based on the Guiding Principles for Open Science published by the MCTES, the Council of Ministers approved a resolution with the guidelines for the National Open Science Policy (PNCA) and mandated the MCTES to create an inter-ministerial Working Group (WG-NOSP), including members from the national scientific and technological system. Under the WG-NOSP, subgroups cover four main areas: open access and open data, infrastructures and digital preservation, scientific evaluation, and social scientific responsibility.

More recently, the Decree Law n. 63/2019 defined that R&D institutions should contribute to Open Science, in accordance with international best practices, ensuring free and open public access to scientific knowledge and promoting engagement and interaction with society.

In 2014, FCT adopted a policy on Open Access to publications, in line with European Commission recommendations. Recently, FCT joined cOAlition-S and is implementing Plan S. Therefore, will update and review the policy in accordance. 

A policy on Open and FAIR data is expected to come into force soon and a national data strategy is also under preparation.

FCT has been actively implementing Open Access strategies, namely by supporting the national Open Access initiative RCAAP (Scientific Open Access Repositories of Portugal), adopting a policy on Open Access to publications, supporting Open Access publishing platforms and also implementing Plan S.

FCT encourages researchers to make data available from R&D projects that are publicly funded in appropriate Open Access databases, whenever possible. A data policy is expected to come into force very soon, aligned with the FAIR principles and making a reference to EOSC. Additionally, infrastructures and services are being made available to the community, in order to ensure research data management best practices, as well as compliance with the policy requirements. These include a service for data management plans and a service for a long tail data repository.

PTCRIS, the Portuguese Current Research Information System, a programme initiated by FCCN, has been promoting the integration of the science management systems of the various entities that operate in the national academic-scientific ecosystem. To this end, PTCRIS has been assuming a key role in the PIDs area. A DOI national service has been implemented, aiming to increase the use of PIDs in the national ecosystem.

In brief, there is a focus on the creation of e-infrastructures that are transversal to the different scientific domains, covering advanced computing, network, and data. There has also been an effort to converge with EOSC in the community adoption of FAIR data principles, PID’s policies, metrics and certifications, and promotion of interoperability between systems (AAI, metadata, protocols, ontologies, etc.).