Let me start by expressing my excitement about the fact that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) does not seem to be repeating the mistake of conflating open science with open access articles. As I argue ad nauseam, open access articles are as incomprehensible to machines as articles behind paywalls. But the overload of information in research outputs is no longer manageable by human intelligence and reading alone. If we want machines to assist us in the meta-analysis of these vast amounts of data, we better make sure that the information is ‘Fully AI Ready’ (FAIR). We know that human languages are nightmarishly difficult for machines and making narrative science open access does not solve that problem at all.

At the recent conference on convergence and FAIR digital objects in Leiden it became apparent to many that open science, with the accompanying policy to publish as much research outputs in machine actionable formats as possible – which in turn are less ambiguous and more comprehensible to humans – is a mainstream idea across the global scientific community. The idea may recast the image of scientific endeavor as a reproducible and trustworthy approach to the world’s major challenges.

The OSTP correctly references all federally funded research outputs – including ‘machine readable’ data – in its policy statement. If this recommendation leads to the adaptation by federal agencies of policies that require the monitoring of compliance to FAIR research outputs, we may finally have woken what some have called ‘the sleeping giant.’ (And interestingly, although the FAIR acronym is not explicitly referenced in the guidance, its literal meaning – findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – is).

With this policy, and the suggestion the United States government sees the need to play ‘catch up’ with Europe and other regions in the world to develop a national strategy for an open research infrastructure, we may have reached a historic tipping point.

And as that yawning but increasingly alert giant stirs, it is vital that Europe pays attention and stops talking about the European Open Science Cloud and starts implementing it. Because once our US colleagues move, we know they move fast, and they do so without an irrational fear of the private sector or an addiction to the endless deliberation that often plagues European decision making. So, a laudable policy, and a wakeup call for Europe!

Biography

Barend Mons is Professor of BioSemantics at the Human Genetics Department of Leiden University Medical Center and founder of the BioSemantics group. Next to his role in the research of the group, Barend plays a leading role in the international development of ‘data stewardship’ for biomedical data. For instance, he was head-of-node of ELIXIR-NL at the Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences until 2015) is Integrator, Life Sciences at the Netherlands eScience Center, and is a board member of the Leiden Centre of Data Science.

In 2014, Barend instigated the FAIR data initiative and in 2015 he was appointed Chair of the European Commission's High Level Expert Group for the “European Open Science Cloud,” from which he retired by the end of 2016.

Barend is co-leading the GO FAIR initiative to kick start the development of the Internet of FAIR data and services, which will also contribute to the implementation of components of the European Open Science Cloud. From 2018-2022 Barend Mons was also President of the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (ISC), the ‘standing committee’ on data of the ISC and serving as an advisory body on science to UNESCO.