111th Helmholtz Open Science Newsletter
Issue of October 15, 2025
Dear Open Science enthusiasts,
This is the latest issue of the Helmholtz Open Science Newsletter brought to you by the Helmholtz Open Science Office. With this newsletter, we provide you with a regular overview of the most important open science developments.
We appreciate you forwarding this newsletter to anyone interested.
- 1. Open Access community founds association to support open-access.network
- 2. PID4NFDI: Successful Workshop on Metadata & PID Workflows within DMP and ELN tools
- 3. Guidelines for DataCite DOI metadata and PIDs for organisations and projects
- 4. Online events by Allianz focus area “Digitality in Science”
- 5. Diamond Open Access in the Spotlight at Open Access Conferences
- 6. New version of the DINI Certificate for Open Access Publication Services
- 7. CoARA National Chapter Meeting in Berlin
- 8. Empirical study of the distributed peer review model
- 9. Copyright: Does the TDM exception in copyright law allow copying for AI training?
- 10. The UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board adopts statement on Open Science
- Save the Dates
- Recommended Reading
- Imprint & License
- Stay up to date
1. Open Access community founds association to support open-access.network
On September 17, 2025, the Open Access community founded the association open-access.network e. V. during the Open Access Days at the University of Konstanz. The founding meeting elected representatives of the organizations currently operating the platform to serve on the association's first board.
This new organizational form is intended to provide long-term support for the platform, which has been in existence since 2007, and to strengthen community involvement. The aim is to continue and further expand the successful work in the areas of exchange, training, and networking related to Open Access in German-speaking countries. The joint project will continue to be funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) until the end of 2025. In addition, the association and the increased involvement of the Open Access community should also contribute to the long-term availability of the platform and its services.
The next general meeting of the association is planned for the first quarter of 2026. The Helmholtz Open Science Office calls on individuals and institutions to become members of the association. Further information on supporting the association is provided here.
2. PID4NFDI: Successful Workshop on Metadata & PID Workflows within DMP and ELN tools
The recent two-day workshop on Metadata & PID Workflows: Joint Workshop for ELN and DMP Tools took place from September 22nd to 23rd as an in-person event in Berlin. It was organized by the PID4NFDI project, a basic service funded by BASE4NFDI, in which the Helmholtz Open Science Office is involved.
Day 1 established the foundation with an introduction to the PID4NFDI project and why Persistent identifier (PIDs) in Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) and Data Management Plans (DMPs) play a crucial role in the research data lifecycle. The session featured lightning talks showcasing various tools like from ResearchSpace and NOMAD. The afternoon focused on a breakout session on interoperability, where groups developed workflows for mapping ELN metadata and enhancing DMP templates with PID integration and quality KPIs.
Day 2 began with discussions on community training needs and materials for PID integration, followed by new lightning talks on topics such as PIDs in eLabFTW and PID integration for instruments. The participants then developed specific ideas for improving metadata quality and completeness.
The workshop served as a crucial milestone for the project. The outcomes will be continued and developed within established online focus groups. A detailed workshop report will be shared shortly.
3. Guidelines for DataCite DOI metadata and PIDs for organisations and projects
The DFG-funded PID Network Germany project has reached important milestones in recent weeks. One key result is the newly developed, practice-oriented guidelines for suppliers of DataCite DOI metadata. These provide scientific institutions with concrete recommendations for creating and maintaining high-quality, FAIR-compliant DataCite DOI metadata. Two institutions can still apply until October 17, 2025, as part of a call for implementation for a three-month, funded pilot phase to implement these guidelines. More information here.
On September 15, 2025, the final event in the seminar series on persistent identifiers (PIDs) took place. The focus was on their use for projects and organizations. Over the past two years, events on a wide variety of entities and use cases have been held to comprehensively highlight the relevance of PIDs in research and science. The focus was on the fundamentals of sustainable networking, visibility, and reuse of knowledge. The speakers presented several key services, such as the Integrated Authority File (GND), GERIT, and RAiD—a standard for uniquely identifying projects and linking them to relevant data, publications, and persons. In addition, ROR ensures open, standardized organizational recording so that institutions can be represented uniformly in different systems. During the discussion, participants explored challenges and best practices for implementing PIDs in organizations and projects in a targeted manner, thereby promoting open and transparent science. The seminar on PIDs for organizations and projects attracted more than 100 participants at times. The documentation (slides and evaluation of the breakout session) is available on the project website.
In addition, the project results will be consolidated and a PID roadmap developed, for which a community feedback phase will start shortly.
4. Online events by Allianz focus area “Digitality in Science”
As part of the focus area “Digitality in Science” of the Alliance of Science Organizations in Germany, two online events will address the future development of research assessment.
On November 14, 2025, the webinar “Reputation and Open Science: How Should the Assessment of Scientific Achievements Evolve?” will take place. In addition to discussing the Alliance’s position paper on further developing research assessment in the context of Open Science, the event will explore current aspects through contributions from experts with diverse perspectives.
On November 21, 2025, the online event “Unlocking Incentives for Future Research – Empowering Early Career Researchers” will focus specifically on the perspective of Early Career Researchers (ECRs).
Both events are organized by the Alliance’s working group “Reputation and Incentives.”
5. Diamond Open Access in the Spotlight at Open Access Conferences
This year's Open Access Days took place in Constance on Lake Constance from September 16 to 19, 2025 accompanied by fine late summer weather. The University of Konstanz hosted a diverse three-day conference program. This time, the focus was primarily on Diamond Open Access (OA) and its current developments and challenges. The keynotes addressed global inequalities in research and in academia, the challenges and opportunities of open infrastructures, and cross-institutional collaboration and coordination. The program also included numerous contributions with participation from the Helmholtz Association: For instance, Bernhard Mittermaier (Forschungszentrum Jülich) gave the first public presentation of the concept of a German Diamond OA Fund, the Helmholtz Open Science Office gave presentations on current legal issues (e.g., rights retention), and the projects Transform2Open and openCost addressed various aspects of OA transformation and OA monitoring in presentations, workshops, and posters. Recordings of the keynotes and many presentations will soon be available on the TIB AV Portal; numerous posters and presentation slides are already available in the Zenodo community of the Open Access Days 2025. The conference also saw the founding of the association to support open-access.network (see below). Next year, the OA Days will take place from September 28 to 30, 2026, at Johannes Kepler University Linz.
Also dedicated to Diamond Open Access was the CRAFT-OA Konferenz, which took place from October 6 to 8 at the University of Göttingen under the slogan “Crafting the Future of Diamond Open Access” and which marked the final phase of the European CRAFT-OA project. The conference brought together stakeholders from the European and international Diamond Open Access community and accompanied the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), which was launched earlier this year. Many of the EDCH's services were presented and officially launched, including the Diamond Discovery Hub, a directory of criteria-checked Diamond Open Access journals, as well as the EDCH Registry and Forum, which serve to connect initiatives, projects, and publication services. A recording of the CRAFT-OA Conference’s presentations is available on the YouTube channel of the University of Göttingen.
6. New version of the DINI Certificate for Open Access Publication Services
A new, revised version of the DINI certificate for Open Access (OA) publication services has been released. The current 2025 certificate, now in its eighth version, includes numerous updates. For the first time since the certificate was introduced over 20 years ago, accessibility is now systematically included as a criterion. In addition, multifunctional systems that provide bibliographies or research data in addition to full texts are now also covered. This continues the further development of the certificate for application to publication services beyond repositories. Another change concerns the recommendation regarding the publication of access statistics: the previous obligation has been dropped in favor of a more practical approach to internal usage data. Applications for the DINI Certificate 2025 can be submitted effective immediately and are subject to the established application and review process.
The DINI Certificate is for assessment of OA publication services according to defined criteria and for certification of those that meet these criteria. The catalog of criteria defines specific minimum requirements for OA publication services to ensure quality, sustainability, and interoperability. The certificate is considered the de facto standard for publication services provided by scientific institutions and libraries, in particular —but not limited to— OA repositories. It has been developed by the DINI Electronic Publishing Consortium (DINI-Arbeitsgruppe Elektronisches Publizieren) since 2004 and is updated every three years. The Helmholtz Open Science Office contributes to the further development of the certificate as part of the working group
7. CoARA National Chapter Meeting in Berlin
The German National Chapter of the Coalition for Reforming Research Assessment (CoARA) held its autumn meeting on October 9–10, 2025. Organized by the Helmholtz Open Science Office, the 42 German member organizations participated both in person at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and online.
The first day featured a public session highlighting recent developments within the international coalition and the national chapter, including the announcement that four German projects had received funding through CoARA’s cascade funding program. Two of these projects were presented during the meeting, illustrating how they are integrating the coalition’s strategy and objectives into institutional policies. Attendees also received updates on outputs from CoARA working groups on Peer Review and Towards Transformations, as well as from research funding organizations.
In the afternoon, a members-only session focused on best practices from ongoing institutional projects and initiatives, covering topics such as the development of new metrics, awareness-raising programs, and high-level policy guidance. On the second day, two impulse presentations examined the relationship between research excellence and CoARA’s commitments and guiding principles. This was followed by group discussions on the characteristics of research excellence, the requirements for achieving it, and the role CoARA can play in supporting this.
The CoARA National Chapter Germany is expected to convene again online in spring 2026. In the meantime, a dedicated webinar will be organized to support the development and implementation of CoARA Action Plans.
8. Empirical study of the distributed peer review model
The traditional peer review system and potential alternatives are the subject of much debate. One option is the distributed peer review model. In this process, all applicants for a funding call are required to review the proposals of the other applicants. A study by the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) in collaboration with the Volkswagen Foundation has empirically examined the advantages and disadvantages of this process. For 140 submissions, both a panel review process and the distributed peer review process were carried out.
There was a large overlap in the proposals that were shortlisted by both methods (10 proposals from distributed peer review, of which 9 were recommended by the panel as well). In the final decision, however, only 3 submissions were selected by both methods. Participants in the study also completed questionnaires about their expectations of the review process. This revealed that most study participants expected the process to be appropriate for identifying the best submissions and that their own submissions would receive a fair assessment. The possibility of strategic manipulation was mentioned as a potentially negative effect. The significantly shorter time span between submission and decision was cited as a positive effect.
Studies such as this make it possible that discussions about peer review are not only abstract, but also data-based. A blog post discusses the study in more detail.
9. Copyright: Does the TDM exception in copyright law allow copying for AI training?
This question, which is important for science and the economy, has led to a controversy that is now to be clarified by the EU Commission.
Various rights holders and interest groups representing rights holders would like to enforce a restrictive interpretation of copyright limitations in the EU, which would prohibit the reproduction of copyright-protected works and the extraction of sui generis protected databases for the creation of corpora for use in text and data mining, whether for research (Art. 3 DSM Directive 2019/790 and section 60d UrhG) or commercial interests (Art. 4 DSM Directive 2019/790 and section 44b UrhG).
The umbrella organization Initiative Urheberrecht commissioned a legal opinion published in 2024, whose authors, Stober and Dornis, conclude that the aforementioned restrictions do not apply to the use of protected content for generative AI. In an article (not Open Access) published this year in the journal Recht Digital, Beurskens comes to the opposite conclusion. The uncertainty about how the restrictions should be understood prompted a member of the European Parliament to submit a question to the EU Commission in September, with the aim of clarifying the matter.
10. The UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board adopts statement on Open Science
The UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board published a statement on Open Science on September 15, 2025. The statement is the body's response to rising geopolitical tensions and significant cuts in science funding by the US government. Both developments are hampering international scientific cooperation, which has received a sustained boost from open science. The budget cuts in the US are having a particularly strong impact because they have affected and continue to affect scientific infrastructures that generate and provide data that is important for science globally. At the same time, these developments highlight the importance of international scientific cooperation, both as a key factor in scientific knowledge gain and as an expression of humanity's shared quest for solutions to pressing problems.
Recommended Reading
Colavizza, G., Cadwallader, L., & Hrynaszkiewicz, I. (2025). An analysis of the effects of open science indicators on citations in the French Open Science Monitor. arXiv. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.20747
Debat, H., Okafor, I. A., Shitindo, M., Amaral, O. B., Izzati, N., Basu Mallick, C., Henry, A. O., Dine, R. D., & Santacruz-Perez, C. (2025). How the Global South is reshaping scholarly communication. eLife, 14, e108426. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.108426
Ivimey-Cook, E. R., Culina, A., Dimri, S., Grainger, M., Kar, F., Lagisz, M., Moran, N. P., Nakagawa, S., Roche, D. G., Sanchez-Tojar, A., Windecker, S. M., & Pick, J. L. (2025). TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing. EcoEvoRxiv. doi.org/10.32942/X2D93K
Kaier, C., Schilhan, L., Lackner, K., & Brohmer, H. (2025). Scholarly publications: criteria, types, and recognition from the researchers’ perspective. Learned Publishing, 38(4), e2019. doi.org/10.1002/leap.2019
Kaliuzhna, N., Aydin, Z., Müller, P., & Hauschke, C. (2025). Hurdles to open access publishing faced by authors: a scoping literature review from 2004 to 2023. Royal Society Open Science, 12(8), 250257. doi.org/10.1098/rsos.250257
Richardson, R. A. K., Hong, S. S., Byrne, J. A., Stoeger, T., & Amaral, L. A. N. (2025). The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(32), e2420092122. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122
Rothfritz, L., Matthias, L., Pampel, H., & Wrzesinski, M. (2025). Current challenges and future directions for institutional repositories: A systematic literature review. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 1–22. doi.org/10.1002/asi.70016