The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information is a voluntary commitment framework, launched on 16 April 2024, under which universities, funders and research infrastructures pledge to make the metadata behind research — publications, datasets, grants, contributor and organisation records — open by default rather than locked inside proprietary databases. Signing creates no legal obligation; it is a public statement of intent, tracked via a published signatory list and reinforced by an annual conference, next meeting in Berlin on 24–25 November 2026.
The barcelona declaration on open research information is a companion reform track to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA): those two reform how research is assessed; this Declaration reforms the underlying information supply chain any assessment depends on.
What is the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information?
The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information is an international policy statement calling on organisations that carry out, fund or evaluate research to make “research information” — metadata about publications, datasets, software, funding and contributors — open, interoperable and FAIR by default. It was prepared by more than 25 research information specialists meeting in Barcelona in November 2023, hosted by the SIRIS Foundation, and launched publicly on 16 April 2024.
Coordination sits with Bianca Kramer (Sesame Open Science), Cameron Neylon (Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative) and Ludo Waltman (Leiden University’s CWTS). Since January 2025, CWTS, Crossref and the SIRIS Foundation have jointly funded a coordination office for three years — an operating structure, not a one-off open letter.
- As of this research (July 2026), the published signatory list names 146 organisations across 34 countries, plus international bodies such as the Coimbra Group and YERUN.
- “Supporters” — infrastructure providers including ROR, DOAJ, COAR, LIBER, SPARC Europe and PLOS — back the Declaration without being signatories themselves.
- Signatories span single universities (Leiden, Edinburgh, Bristol, Utrecht), national consortia (Udice, Universities of the Netherlands) and funders (Wellcome Trust, Austrian Science Fund, Dutch Research Council).
Open, closed and restricted: how the Declaration defines research information
“Research information” is the Declaration’s term for metadata — not the underlying publication, dataset or software itself, but data about it: titles, abstracts, author and affiliation data, funding details, and organisation identifiers. The Declaration treats openness of this metadata as a spectrum rather than a binary switch.
| Category | Definition (per the Declaration) | Named examples |
|---|---|---|
| Open research information | Free to access and free of reuse restrictions; ideally FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and carrying a CC0 waiver | OpenAlex, OpenCitations, OpenAIRE, Crossref, DataCite, ORCID |
| Closed research information | Locked inside proprietary infrastructure with severe reuse restrictions, typically paywalled | Web of Science, Scopus (both named directly by the Declaration’s background text) |
| Restricted (conditionally open) research information | Information that cannot ethically be made fully open — chiefly for privacy reasons — and should instead be handled under “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” | Aggregated, privacy-sensitive contributor or assessment data, assessed case by case against relevant regulation |
This is not an all-or-nothing pledge. Signing requires a default presumption of openness, with narrow, justified exceptions — not publishing everything.
The four commitments signatories make
Every signatory commits to the same four points, set out on the Declaration’s commitments page, moving from internal default to supplier requirements to infrastructure funding to collective governance.
- Commitment 1 — openness by default. Research information used (for assessment, funding, discovery) and produced (about its own activities) becomes open by default, with privacy-based exceptions handled case by case.
- Commitment 2 — open-enabling systems. Publishing platforms and internal current research information systems (CRIS) must make relevant metadata exportable and open, using standard identifiers.
- Commitment 3 — infrastructure sustainability. The organisation contributes fairly to the financial stability and governance of open scholarly infrastructures, expecting them to follow the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).
- Commitment 4 — collective action. The organisation backs a proposed Coalition for Open Research Information, coordinating with related initiatives rather than acting alone.
How it fits with CoARA, DORA and the European Research Area
The Barcelona Declaration is deliberately positioned as complementary to, not competing with, the research-assessment reform movement. Its own background text cites DORA, supported by roughly 3,000 organisations and more than 20,000 individuals globally, and CoARA, whose agreement more than 600 organisations have joined, as evidence that “support for open research information is rapidly increasing.”
| Framework | Primary focus | Launched | Reported scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information | Openness of the metadata underlying research assessment and discovery | 16 Apr 2024 | 146 signatories, 34+ countries |
| DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) | Reforming how research outputs and researchers are evaluated | 2012 | ~3,000 organisations, 20,000+ individuals |
| CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) | Reforming assessment criteria and career-evaluation practice, largely EU-driven | 2022 | 600+ organisations |
The overlap with the European Research Area policy agenda is direct. The EU Council has adopted conclusions on research assessment and open science stating that “data and bibliographic databases used for research assessment should, in principle, be openly accessible” — language the Declaration cites as its own rationale. For institutions already reporting into CoARA or Horizon Europe open-science requirements, signing supplies the open-infrastructure layer responsible assessment reform depends on, not a separate compliance track.
What signing meant for The Guild and Maastricht University
Two recent signings show what commitment looks like at different institutional scales.
The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, a network of research-intensive universities across Europe, joined as an international signatory (announced 28 May 2026) — committing its member network collectively to advocate for open research information, rather than acting through one campus policy.
Maastricht University signed on 12 June 2026, when Rector Magnificus Jan Smits put his name to the Declaration during the first Open Science Festival Limburg. UM had already taken a concrete Commitment-2-style step beforehand: it invested in an OpenAlex partner subscription and announced it will end its Scopus licence from 2027, explicitly framing the move as reducing reliance on closed, proprietary research information systems. UM says the Declaration reinforces its existing Open Science and Recognition & Rewards ambitions and will keep shaping its reporting and assessment practices.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information?
It is a voluntary policy declaration, launched 16 April 2024, under which research organisations, funders and infrastructures commit to making metadata about publications, data, software and funding open by default. It has no regulatory force; its four commitments are tracked through a public signatory list rather than enforced sanctions.
Is signing the Barcelona Declaration legally binding?
No. Like DORA and CoARA, it is a principle-based commitment, not a regulation or contract. Signatories self-report progress, and accountability comes from public visibility — the signatory list, national networks and the annual conference — rather than from any enforcement or certification mechanism.
How does the Barcelona Declaration differ from CoARA and DORA?
DORA and CoARA target how researchers and outputs are assessed; the Barcelona Declaration targets the metadata infrastructure any assessment relies on. Institutions frequently sign more than one — the commitments are explicitly framed as reinforcing each other, not substitutes.
Implications for research offices weighing whether to sign
For a research administration office, signing is a two-stage decision. First, an audit question: does current research information — CRIS exports, assessment data sources, publisher metadata agreements — already lean on closed, subscription-gated infrastructure such as Web of Science or Scopus, and what would shifting toward open alternatives (OpenAlex, OpenAIRE, Crossref, ORCID, ROR) cost operationally?
Second, a governance question: signing is public, and Commitment 2 carries procurement implications — new publisher and system contracts should require exportable, open metadata rather than closed defaults. Institutions already committed to CoARA or Horizon Europe open-science requirements will find the overlap works in their favour.
The 2026 conference — themed “Aligning policy and practical implementation,” held 24–25 November 2026 at the Leibniz Association headquarters in Berlin and online, with its call for proposals open until 1 September 2026 — signals where the Declaration is heading: from a statement of intent toward shared, documented implementation practice. Research offices that sign now join that practice-sharing track from the start, rather than adopting a more settled framework later with less influence over how it develops.