Towards an Open Science definition as a political and legal framework: on the sharing and dissemination of research outputs

Abstract: It is widely recognised nowadays that there is no single, accepted, unified definition of Open Science, which motivates our proposal of an Open Science definition as a political and legal framework where research outputs are shared and disseminated in order to be rendered visible, accessible, reusable is developed, standing over the concepts enhanced by the Budapest Open Science Initiative (BOAI), and by the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open data movements. We elaborate this proposal through a detailed analysis of some selected EC policies and laws as well as of the function of research evaluation practices. The legal aspects considered in our examination include, in particular, the study of the role of licenses in the context of the dissemination of research outputs.