History of the Helmholtz Open Science Office

Since 2005, the Helmholtz Open Science Office has been actively shaping the cultural shift toward open science within the Helmholtz Association, as well as at the national and international levels.

The Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest research performing organisation and addresses some of the most pressing challenges facing science, society, and industry. Integrating 18 legally independent centers and more than 100 national and international sites, Helmholtz pursues groundbreaking research across a broad spectrum of fields, including the natural sciences, life sciences, and engineering.

The OS Office is responsible for developing its own priority areas in line with the Helmholtz mission and the interests of the Helmholtz Centres. Following the 2019 evaluation, the OS Office was tasked with serving as the Helmholtz Association’s ambassador to national and international open science communities. In order to align its positions and activities, the OS Office maintains strong connections with relevant stakeholders within the Helmholtz Head Office in Berlin and the various Helmholtz Centres, guided by the motto 'Advancing Open Science at Helmholtz and beyond'. As the decentralised structure of Helmholtz requires it to be affiliated with a specific centre, the OS Office is hosted legally and administratively by the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

The Beginnings: Commitment to Open Science (2003–2013)

In this context, Open Science plays an increasingly important role in ensuring that Helmholtz research is robust, impactful, and trustworthy. Recognizing this early on, the Helmholtz Association publicly expressed its commitment to Open Science in 2003, when it became one of the initial signatories of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. In 2004, the Helmholtz Association’s Members Assembly set out to implement the declaration by encouraging researchers to publish in Open Access and ensuring that such publications would be valued equally to traditional outputs. 

In 2005, this vision took shape with the launch of the Helmholtz Open Access Project, which was led by Hans Pfeiffenberger (Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research) and Roland Bertelmann (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences). In its foundational strategy paper, “Implementing Open Access to Publications and Data from the Helmholtz Association”, the project outlined four focus areas: 

  1. Awareness, best practices, and sustainability,
  2. Secondary publication (postprints) after traditional peer review,
  3. Primary publication according to Open Access principles, and
  4. Open publication of measurement and model data. 

Consolidation and Policy Development (2014–2019)

A new phase began in 2014, when the project became more firmly embedded within the Helmholtz Association as the Helmholtz Open Access Coordination Office. A major milestone occurred in 2016, when the Helmholtz Members Assembly adopted a formal policy on Open Access Publishing, providing a framework for a coordinated transformation toward Open Access across all Helmholtz Centers. In addition, recommendations on Open Research Data and Open Research Software were developed to guide Open Science developments in these areas in the Helmholtz Association.

Mandate and strategic orientation (from 2019)

Following a positive external evaluation in 2019, the Office expanded its activities and adopted its current name: Helmholtz Open Science Office. From 2021 onwards, the activities of the OS Office started to expand beyond the three classical Open Science themes (Open Access, Open Research Data, and Open Research Software) to encompass broader aspects required to support the cultural change towards Open Science. During this phase, the OS Office also increasingly participated in strategic third-party funded projects and adopted a central role in national and international initiatives concerned with Open Science and digitalization in science. In 2022, the OS Office facilitated the development and adoption of the Helmholtz Open Science Policy as a pioneering step in advancing the transition toward Open Science. As the first research organization in Germany, Helmholtz commits itself to Open Science, in line with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and its anchoring in national and European science policy.

Recent Developments and Outlook (from 2022 onwards)

In 2022, the OS Office moved from the main GFZ campus to its current location in the Helmholtzstraße in Potsdam and continued to professionalize its operations and activities within the Helmholtz Association and beyond. In 2023, building on pilot baseline indicators, the OS Office, in cooperation with the Working Group Open Science, developed the first concept for quality indicators for research data and software publications; thereby anchoring further facets of Open Science in the Association’s infrastructural landscape. Following the retirement of Roland Bertelmann, Dr. Mathijs Vleugel assumed leadership of the OS Office in September 2024 and expanded its remit to include a stronger focus on the recognition and incentives needed to support the cultural shift towards open science.