The European legal approach to Open Science and research data

This dissertation proposes an analysis of the governance of the European scientific research, focusing on the emergence of the Open Science paradigm: a new way of doing science, oriented towards the openness of every phase of the scientific research process, able to take full advantage of the digital ICTs. The emergence of this paradigm is relatively recent, but in the last years it has become increasingly relevant. The European institutions expressed a clear intention to embrace the Open Science paradigm (eg., think about the European Open Science Cloud, EOSC; or the establishment of the Horizon Europe programme). This dissertation provides a conceptual framework for the multiple interventions of the European institutions in the field of Open Science, addressing the major legal challenges of its implementation. The study investigates the notion of Open Science, proposing a definition that takes into account all its dimensions related to the human and fundamental rights framework in which Open Science is grounded. The inquiry addresses the legal challenges related to the openness of research data, in light of the European Open Data framework and the impact of the 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 e-infrastructures. The focus is on a specific type of computational infrastructure: the High Performance Computing (HPC) facility. The adoption of HPC for research is analysed 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, the ULHPC. This dissertation intends to underline the relevance of the legal coordination approach, between all actors and phases of the process, in order to develop and implement the Open Science paradigm, adhering to the underlying human and fundamental rights.

The conceptualisation of music in ancient Greek thought (V century B.C. – II century B.C.)

The focus of this dissertation is the analysis of the music-related philosophical passages from the 5th century B.C. to the 2nd century B.C. It aims to provide a multifaceted view towards music as a cultural phenomenon, which is based primarily on the philological and culturological explorations instead of the technical-musicological approach. The texts from our selected period attest that mousikē had an extremely broad conceptualisation which led to the attribution of the different, sometimes completely opposite value: from an insignificant performative practice to an activity which corresponds to the divine laws and directly affects the human soul. The discussed testimonia provide evidence of defining music both as an exclusively acoustic phenomenon and as a philosophically significant concept that oversteps the sonic definition. Our sources clearly demonstrate that mousikē was a polysemous term: it was understood as an interdisciplinary form of art (as the arts of the Muses), though it was also used to indicate the exclusively instrumental music or a philosophical concept, which does not necessarily define sound as its essential quality. The aim of this dissertation is to clarify the arguments behind each of these positions, to analyse whether such different modes of conceptualisation are compatible among themselves, and to see how they fit together into explaining what was understood as music in Antiquity. In this thesis we explore the conceptual framework of mousikē and analyse what enabled the musical thought to be worthy of the attention of the greatest philosophical minds. We will demonstrate that it was not the sound or the artistic practices that were central in the philosophical thought on music, but instead the embedded structural qualities that have correspondence to the universal proportions of the cosmic world and which are perceptible to the listeners through the medium of sound.

Multi-Principal Agency and the Compliance with Professional Guidelines in Health Systems: Economic and Regulatory Perspectives

Amid the trend of rising health expenditure in developed economies, changing the healthcare delivery models is an important point of action for service regulators to contain this trend. Such a change is mostly induced by either financial incentives or regulatory tools issued by the regulators and targeting service providers and patients. This creates a tripartite interaction between service regulators, professionals, and patients that manifests a multi-principal agent relationship, in which professionals are agents to two principals: regulators and patients. This thesis is concerned with such a multi-principal agent relationship in healthcare and attempts to investigate the determinants of the (non-)compliance to regulatory tools in light of this tripartite relationship. In addition, the thesis provides insights into the different institutional, economic, and regulatory settings, which govern the multi-principal agent relationship in healthcare in different countries. Furthermore, the thesis provides and empirically tests a conceptual framework of the possible determinants of (non-)compliance by physicians to regulatory tools issued by the regulator. The main findings of the thesis are first, in a multi-principal agent setting, the utilization of financial incentives to align the objectives of professionals and the regulator is important but not the only solution. This finding is based on the heterogeneity in the financial incentives provided to professionals in different health markets, which does not provide a one-size-fits-all model of financial incentives to influence clinical decisions. Second, soft law tools as clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are important tools to mitigate the problems of the multi-principal agent setting in health markets as they reduce information asymmetries while preserving the autonomy of professionals. Third, CPGs are complex and heterogeneous and so are the determinants of (non-)compliance to them. Fourth, CPGs work but under conditions. Factors such as intra-professional competition between service providers or practitioners might lead to non-compliance to CPGs – if CPGs are likely to reduce the professional’s utility. Finally, different degrees of soft law mandate have different effects on providers’ compliance. Generally, the stronger the mandate, the stronger the compliance, however, even with a strong mandate, drivers such as intra-professional competition and co-management of patients by different professionals affected the (non-)compliance.

Influencable autonomy and predictable freedom in the IoE

This thesis investigates how individuals can develop, exercise, and maintain autonomy and freedom in the presence of information technology. It is particularly interested in how information technology can impose autonomy constraints. The first part identifies a problem with current autonomy discourse: There is no agreed upon object of reference when bemoaning loss of or risk to an individual’s autonomy. Here, thesis introduces a pragmatic conceptual framework to classify autonomy constraints. In essence, the proposed framework divides autonomy in three categories: intrinsic autonomy, relational autonomy and informational autonomy. The second part of the thesis investigates the role of information technology in enabling and facilitating autonomy constraints. The analysis identifies eleven characteristics of information technology, as it is embedded in society, so-called vectors of influence, that constitute risk to an individual’s autonomy in a substantial way. These vectors are assigned to three sets that correspond to the general sphere of the information transfer process to which they can be attributed to, namely domain-specific vectors, agent-specific vectors and information recipient-specific vectors. The third part of the thesis investigates selected ethical and legal implications of autonomy constraints imposed by information technology. It shows the utility of the theoretical frameworks introduced earlier in the thesis when conducting an ethical analysis of autonomy-constraining technology. It also traces the concept of autonomy in the European Data Lawsand investigates the impact of cultural embeddings of individuals on efforts to safeguard autonomy, showing intercultural flashpoints of autonomy differences. In view of this, the thesis approaches the exercise and constraint of autonomy in presence of information technology systems holistically. It contributes to establish a common understanding of (intuitive) terminology and concepts, connects this to current phenomena arising out of ever-increasing interconnectivity and computational power and helps operationalize the protection of autonomy through application of the proposed frameworks.

Fighting child marriage in developing countries: design and development of a mobile application

Child marriage is still a great issue in developing countries and even if the interventions to prevent it are having results, they are not enough to eliminate the problem. Among the strategies that seem to work most to fight child marriage, there is the empowerment of girls with information combined with education of parents and community. As smartphones are more accessible year after year in developing countries, this thesis wants to investigate if a mobile app could be effective in fighting child marriage and which characteristics such an app should have. The research was organized in four phases and used design and creation and case study methodologies. Firstly, the literature was analyzed and an initial design was proposed. Secondly, expert interviews were performed to gain feedback on the proposed design, and afterwards prototype was built. Thirdly, a case study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was performed to test the prototype, gaining insights and improvements through group interviews with 26 girls aged 15-19. Finally, a first version of the app was developed and a second phase of the case study was run in the DRC to understand if the girls were able to use the app. This phase included 14 girls of which 6 had participated in the prototype testing and used questionnaires as a data generation method. The app was built following the Principles for Digital Development. Even if this app is built based on the case study in DRC is modular and easily adaptable to other contexts as it is not content-specific. It was shown that is worth continuing to study this topic and it was defined a conceptual framework for designing learning apps for developing countries, in particular, to fight child, early, and forced marriage.