New working document: Rewarding people and institutions for managing their public research 
SPARC Europe was recently invited by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to discuss policy issues related to public research data and rewards. We offered a number of concrete suggestions for recommendations centred on increasing the likelihood of open and FAIR data being recognized by government. We are sharing these ideas in the form of a live, open Google document, which we invite you to review and contribute to. If you know of other good practices not listed, we encourage you to add them to the file.

Explore the document.

New case study: Examining Open Data policies of two OD drivers — the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission
With governments and institutions throughout Europe increasingly recognizing the need for Open Data policies; there is also a need for highlighting best practices. Together with the Digital Curation Center (DCC), we are releasing a case study that provides insights into two data policy leaders, the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission.

Download the paper.

SCOSS Network gains first library consortium funder, among other new global institution supporters
During the past month, the SCOSS network of global funders has continued to grow. With the commitment of Consortium Luxembourg, and seven other university libraries in Europe and North America, funding commitments pledged in the past month exceed €45,000.

While Luxembourg is our first confirmed consortium, we are in discussion with many others. As a reminder, consortia are granted a 25% discount. If you are not yet in a conversation about joining the network of funders, now may be a good time.

In other SCOSS news, the coalition will be presented at the LIBER Conference in July 2018 in Lille and at the 39th IATUL Conference in June 2018 in Oslo. We hope you can make it to one of these events.

See the SCOSS website for further updates.

Creative Commons Global Summit 2018 — authors & copyright control
Together with Creative Commons, the Authors Alliance, and many other international participants, SPARC Europe will be at the Creative Commons Global Summit 2018 in Toronto April 13-15. We’ll help run a workshop, Giving authors Control: How to retain and regain your copyright, on the 14th to raise awareness of author rights and related issues and opportunities. The session will cover current contexts; author knowledge gaps related to copyright, licensing, publishing practice; as well as advocacy tools and campaigns that can support efforts to help change practices around author rights retention.

The outcomes of this event will be folded into our planned activities on author rights retention this year. If you are unable to attend but have ideas you would like shared on the topic during the workshop, let us know: info@sparceurope.org

Find out more, and join us!