Department of Law

The dissertation proposes an analysis of the governance of the European scientific research, focusing on the emergence of the Open Science paradigm. The paradigm of Open Science indicates a new way of doing science, oriented towards the openness of every phase of the scientific research process, and able to take full advantage of the digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The emergence of this paradigm is relatively recent, but in the last couple of years it has become increasingly relevant. The European institutions expressed a clear intention to embrace the Open Science paradigm, with several interventions and policies on this matter. Among many, consider, for example, the project of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), a federated and trusted environment for access and sharing of research data and services for the benefit of the European researchers; or the establishment of the new research funding programme, i.e., the Horizon Europe programme, laid down in the EU Regulation 2021/695, which links research funding to the adoption of the Open Science tenets. This dissertation examines the European approach to Open Science, providing a conceptual framework for the multiple interventions of the European institutions in the field of Open Science, as well as addressing the major legal challenges that the implementation of this new paradigm is generating. To this aim, the study first investigates the notion of Open Science, in order to understand what specifically falls under the umbrella of this broad term: it is proposed a definition that takes into account all its dimensions and an analysis of the human and fundamental rights framework in which Open Science is grounded. After that, the inquiry addresses the legal challenges related to the openness of research data, in light of the European legislative framework on Open Data. This also requires drawing attention to the European data protection framework, analysing the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the context of Open Science. The last part of the study is devoted to the infrastructural dimension of the Open Science paradigm, exploring the digital infrastructures that are increasingly an integral part of the scientific research process. In particular, the focus is on a specific type of computational infrastructure, namely the High Performance Computing (HPC) facility. The adoption of HPC for research is analysed both from the European perspective, investigating the EuroHPC project, and the local perspective, proposing the case study of the HPC facility of the University of Luxembourg, namely the ULHPC. This dissertation intends to underline the relevance of the legal coordination approach, between all actors and phases of the scientific research process, in order to develop and implement the Open Science paradigm, adhering to the underlying human and fundamental rights.