Now that summer is here, SND’s director Eva Stensköld reflects on her first six months in the position. Eva also wants to take the opportunity to send a summer greeting and urge us to raise our eyes and remind ourselves of how important the work with open science is.
The corridors of Sweden’s higher education institutions are becoming increasingly empty as many go on vacation – and many of us at SND as well. I have been the director for almost six months – and what a half-year it’s been. We’ve managed to visit all our consortium universities, organized several events, initiated strategic work for future investments, and raised our ambitions in several international collaborations, especially within EOSC. All this while working to fulfil the core of our mission – to provide researchers with a coordinated and quality-assured system for finding, describing, using, and sharing research data. Hats off to all of you who, in various ways and with your particular expertise, have contributed to this work – we extend a huge thank you to you!
SND has also participated in Almedalsveckan and organized our very first own event in the form of a panel discussion where we posed the somewhat uncomfortable question: The road to open access to research data – how is the transition progressing? It may seem like a rhetorical question because we all know it’s going far too slowly. But the panel discussion provided many interesting and thoughtful answers on how the pace can be increased and who should do what to achieve this. Moderator Anna Wetterbom summarized it well by saying that open science is a verb that we all have a responsibility for; we simply have to start doing open science. The discussion can still be watched on SND's YouTube channel; do it – it's worth it!
When I was in Almedalen, I also noted that in the shadow of political speeches and rosé wine, there were many conversations going on that started from matters of science and democracy. I believe this is especially important – to sometimes look up, pause, and remember why we are doing what we do. The purpose of an open science system is to give everyone in society free and open access to scientific texts, research results, and research data. So, one could say that we at SND, and all of you out there working with various aspects of open science, are indeed democracy builders – and I think that’s a beautiful thing.
But the summer is short – let's now fully enjoy it, and we will come back in autumn and continue to do open science.
Eva Stensköld
Director of SND