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Dear all, I am delighted to share great news from France: on July 6th, the French Ministry of Research unveiled the second multi-annual National Plan for Open Science, which is a landmark policy document. The official document is available online from the website of the French Ministry of Research <https://cache.media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/science_ouverte/20/9/MEN_brochure_PNSO_web_1415209.pdf>, with an unofficial (and perfectible) english translation available at https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/second-national-plan-for-open-science/ (an official English version will be available in a few weeks from the Ministry of Resarch dedicated page <https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid159131/le-plan-national-pour-la-science-ouverte-2021-2024-vers-une-generalisation-de-la-science-ouverte-en-france.html> ). For our community, I believe two parts of this plan are particularly interesting: section 1, that contains important concrete provisions to foster Open Access; and section 3, that squarely puts software on a par with publications and data in research and Open Science, and announces a number of measures designed to open up research software and better recognize software development in research. Here are some significant measures that are announced for research publications (section 1 of the plan): - achieve 100% open access publications by 2030 - support Diamond open access publishing - request that the data and code associated with the article texts submitted be provided - promote the use of narrative CVs to reduce the importance of quantitative assessments to the benefit of qualitative ones Here are some highlights of the measures related to software (section 3 of the plan): - a clear recommendation to make research software available under an open source licence, unless there are strong reasons not to do so - the creation of a high level expert group dedicated to research software in the National Committee for Open Science - the objective to achieve better recognition of software development in career evaluation for researchers and engineers - a renewed and strengthened official support of Software Heritage <https://www.softwareheritage.org/>, with a recommendation to archive in it *all research software produced in France* (a simple HOWTO is available at https://www.softwareheritage.org/howto-archive-and-reference-your-code/) - a plan to get an ISO standard for the Software Heritage intrinsic identifiers <https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/07/09/intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-identifiers/> for source code [1] To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time that such an organic, clearly designed strategy for (open source) software in research is laid out in an official government-level document. -- Roberto [1] these identifiers (aka SWHID <https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/05/13/swhid-adoption/>) allow to pinpoint inside the archive any software artifact, down to the level of the line of code. For example, here is a *nice fragment in the Apollo 11 source code <https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:cnt:1baf1ca1d5d06dd4518520d89482ff94c02dfbae;origin=https:/github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11;visit=swh:1:snp:7c00bec40f5e077e0d7acf92aaa4aaa63cd5d71b;anchor=swh:1:rev:422050965990dfa8ad1ffe4ae92e793d7d1ddae5;path=/Luminary099/BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc;lines=53-72/>* and here is *a mythical routine in the Quake III Arena source code <https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:cnt:bb0faf6919fc60636b2696f32ec9b3c2adb247fe;origin=https:/github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena;visit=swh:1:snp:4ab9bcef131aaf449a7c01370aff8c91dcecbf5f;anchor=swh:1:rev:dbe4ddb10315479fc00086f08e25d968b4b43c49;path=/code/game/q_math.c;lines=546-579/>* *. *For a short demo, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nlSvYh7VpI (the interesting part starts around 9:00) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Computer Science Professor (on leave at Inria from IRIF/Université de Paris) Director Software Heritage E-mail : robe...@dicosmo.org INRIA Web : http://www.dicosmo.org Bureau C328 Twitter : http://twitter.com/rdicosmo 2, Rue Simone Iff Tel : +33 1 80 49 44 42 CS 42112 75589 Paris Cedex 12 ------------------------------------------------------------------ GPG fingerprint 2931 20CE 3A5A 5390 98EC 8BFC FCCA C3BE 39CB 12D3