Matthias Egger is professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol. Since January 2017, he is the president of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. His publications are highly regarded and he is one of the world’s most cited researchers in epidemiology. In 1997, Professor Egger published a paper describing a method for detecting bias in meta-analyses by analysing funnel plots. This paper has been cited more than 22,300 times on Google Scholar. In 2005 he also published another important paper in the Lancet about homoeopathy and placebo effect. Matthias Egger is a member of several faculties and international scientific committees and has received numerous scientific honours across the world. Professor Egger has been one of the pioneering researchers who combined epidemiology and public health to fight the HIV epidemic; his predictive models on the development of AIDS are used as a reference in many industrialised and developing countries. His work also covers Ebola and tuberculosis. In his talk Matthias will reflect on the challenges on the road to “Open Science”, with a focus on open access to the scientific literature and the evaluation of research.