  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.
