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Definition of Open Science
Open Science (OS) broadly refers to publicly sharing scientific research, methods, and data in order to increase collaboration, transparency and innovation. However, definitions vary, and there is no single activity that characterizes Open Science. Primary activities including open access, open research data, and open collaboration such as open research notebooks (OECD).
OS focuses on all aspects of the research lifecycle to encompass a wide array of practices and open strategies. It emphasizes open access publications, open data sharing that encourages re-use, and open reproducible research. This last value also includes open methodology so that researchers have access to the materials, codes, and methods to reproduce research methodology (Pontika et. al, n.p.).
UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) Definition and Recommendation
UNESCO’s Definition of Open Science is “an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible, and reusable for everyone, to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 4)
UNESCO identifies the interaction between scientists and societal actors as foundational to Open Science. Traditional “closed” science occurs behind closed doors in a lab. Open Science encourages scientists to collaborate with citizens, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and other community members to build community knowledge (UNESCO, 2021, p. 7). This creates an “open dialogue with other knowledge systems” that enhances the diversity of scientific knowledge (UNESCO, 2021, p. 4).
UNESCO developed a Recommendation on Open Science that clearly connects the goals of Open Science with its organizational mission. The Recommendation provides a framework for countries to adopt Open Science and shared definitions of what Open Science includes. Key takeaways from the Recommendation:
Open Science has the capability of “addressing complex and interconnected environmental, social, and economic challenges” (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 1)
Open Science has the “transformative potential [...] for reducing the existing inequalities in [science, technology and innovation]” (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 1)
COVID-19 has illustrated the power of Open Science
Open Science affirms the principles of existing UN principles including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and UNESCO’s Recommendation for OERs (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 1-2)
Open Science “respects the diversity of cultures and knowledge systems around the world as foundations for sustainable development, fostering open dialogue with indigenous peoples and local communities and respect for diverse knowledge holders for contemporary problem solving” (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 3)
Characterized by 4 values: quality and integrity, collective benefit, equity and fairness, diversity and inclusiveness (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 7)
Open Science Activities: Scientific publications, Research data, Metadata, Open educational resources, Software, Source code and hardware in the public domain or under a copyright license that allows for reuse and sharing, Open research methodologies and evaluation processes (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 4-5)
Required Infrastructure: open access publication platforms, online repositories or archives for publications and data, open bibliometrics systems for evaluating the science, open labs, open peer review
Key principles (UNESCO, 2021, p.8):
Transparency, scrutiny, critique and reproducibility
Equality of opportunities: should include everyone
Responsibility, respect and accountability: upholding integrity and respect for everyone, following ethical guidelines etc.
Collaboration, participation and inclusion: open science should transcend geographic boundaries, disciplines and “inclusion of knowledge from marginalized communities” (UNESCO, 2021, Annex p. 8)
Flexibility: no single way to conduct open science
Sustainability: should be efficient and impactful, build on long-term practices and services to ensure longevity, should be a non-profit endeavour
Barriers to Implementing Open Science
Many of the barriers to Open Science are shared with those faced by Open Access practitioners. These barriers include:
Most researchers are not encouraged at the institutional level to comply with Open Science policies and are not rewarded for their work. Also don’t want to share their code for free after putting in so much work (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.)
This varies by discipline. Some have taken to Open Science and others have not.
Requires a significant amount of time to figure out which Open Science policy, tool, and framework to use; also need a lot of time to learn how to use a tool (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.)
Scientists are wary of sharing today for fear that others will use it and take their ideas (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
Extra steps are required to clean up data for privacy reasons, to make comments so that others understand your methods, providing additional description to codes (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
No reward for publishing negative results which is important so that scientists can reevaluate projects (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
Many scientists lack the financial resources to adopt Open Science policies (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
Lose a certain amount of flexibility if scientists are pre-registering their experiments. This requires scientists to disclose their hypotheses and methods before data collection for purposes of peer review. This limits the iterative nature of science and can make it difficult for scientists to go back and alter their research as they collect data (Allen and Mehler, 2019, p. 2-3)
No single standard for data quality. Data sets are not equal and there may be a quality control issue (Allen and Mehler, 2019, p.118)
Policies and Standards
There is no single policy or standard for Open Science practice which can make it difficult for researchers to adopt OS. However, existing policies can help guide institutions for incorporating OS into their research culture. Open Science policies are simply a collection of policies pertaining to open access publishing, open data management and sharing and open educational resources relating to science. Since we have covered in detail open access publishing and OER policies, I will briefly describe an example of an open data management and sharing policy.
National Institute of Health Policy on Data Management and Sharing
Key takeaways:
Effective January 25, 2023; Previously only applied to individuals seeking $500,000 in direct costs
Supports best data sharing and management practices which encourages scientists to conduct rigorous and reproducible research
Applies to all research funded (either fully or partly) by the NIH; Encourages all institutions to adopt these practices
Requires a Data Management and Sharing Plan that details how data will be stored and shared; Need to outline limitations and timeline of data sharing; Encourages researchers to make the data available as long as possible
Explicitly details the sovereignty of Native nations over their own data; Researchers need to outline how “privacy, rights, and confidentiality of human research participants will be protected” (n.p.)
Suggests researchers use existing online repositories to share and manage their data
Drawbacks of policy → does not have a lot of teeth; depends on the type of project being funded; failure to submit a plan or have a plan approved will be considered in future funding applications; may prompt special conditions to be met.
Open Science Projects and Organizations
Center for Open Science: This organization strives to “increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research” (Mission). COS aims to create tools and initiatives that support Open Science and provide training and analysis on the current state of OS (Center for Open Science, 2017, p. 3,6). It’s main project is the Open Science Framework, an open data commons to share all aspects of the research lifecycle such as data and preprints (Center for Open Science, 2017, p. 14).
Open Lab Notebooks: An online space for researchers to share their lab notebooks and day-to-day results. The website states: “By sharing their research in this open and timely manner, they reduce duplication of work, help foster new collaborations and cultivate a more open dialogue with others” (About).
Open Science Chain (OSC): OSC is run by the National Science Foundation to encourage the re-use of research data through open data sharing and training for open science. Their website allows users to provide descriptive metadata and verification measures of their data sets (About).
European Open Science Cloud: A project of the European Commission, the EOSC is an online repository that “provide[s] European researchers, innovators, companies and citizens with a federated and open multi-disciplinary environment where they can publish, find and re-use data, tools and services for research, innovation and educational purposes” (European Open Science Cloud). Includes research not just for the hard sciences, but also the humanities and social sciences.
Open Science Grid (OSG): This organization is run by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. OSG manages the Open Science Data Federation that “enable users and institutions to make datasets available” globally (Open Science Data Federation). Only academics, governments and non-profit institutions in the United States can upload data. OSG also manages the Open Science Pool, a “shared computing and data resources using distributed high-throughput computing,” essentially collecting computing resources from across the United States to be used by scientists (Open Science Data Federation).
FOSTER: a European Commission project that is focused on providing training and education on Open Science. The portal collects and organizes training materials relating to Open Science using its OS taxonomy (Pontika et. al). FOSTER has also created the Open Science Training Handbook which is an online educational resource to learn about OS and how to implement it at your own institution.
Libraries and Open Science
Academic libraries and librarians have the potential to promote Open Science projects and goals within their institutes using the skill sets and strategies already in use within their organization. However, adopting Open Science will also challenge librarians to create new services and expand their skill set, particularly in data management. Below is a description of services and skills that libraries must implement in order to support Open Science.
Research Data Management and Institutional Repositories
One of the biggest challenges for libraries in adopting Open Science is research data management and curation so that they can work with Open Big Data and expand their digital services (Tzanova, 2020, p. 292). Additionally, librarians will need to be comfortable working with multiple types of data including videos, spreadsheets, handwritten notes and lab reports. Libraries can work on creating policies for data sets within their own organizations or work with individual faculty to create data management plans by identifying existing repositories that best fit the needs of their patrons, for example those indexed by RE3DATA (Tzanova, 2020, p. 293). Librarians will also need to advise researchers on appropriate data storage policies and what they should do with new data generated during their projects (Tzanova, 2020, p. 295).
In creating their own institutional repositories or becoming expert data curators, librarians can ensure a diversity of research by preserving all types of data sets (Tzanova, 2020, p. 294). Things that libraries will need to consider when creating their own repository include “understanding software, project planning and management, collection definition, metadata guidance, submission review, and author training” (Tzanova, 2020, p. 118).
Administrative Role
Librarians can also act as important administration roles in adopting Open Science policies by “preparing documentation about formal roles of institutional bodies [...], publication agreements and - in terms of modes of data sharing – defining the additional specific policies for open but sensitive data restricted under federal or local legislation” (Tzanova, 2020, p. 295).
Education
One of the biggest things librarians can do is to educate scientists on what Open Science is and provide them with the tools to easily adapt it to their own practice. This can include:
Educating researchers on the use of digital timestamps or citation practices so that they can add their tools or data sets to their C.V. Data citations also encourage scientists to have good quality data (Tzanova, 2020, p. 118)
Providing information about altmetrics where they can trace the impact of their open data/tool for tenure applications (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
Encouraging their institutions to see data, code and tools as citable items and similar works of scholarly merit the same as research articles (Scheliga and Friesike, 2014, n.p.).
Tailoring instruction about the research life cycle to include Open Science practices so that they are not seen as “extra” or time consuming, i.e. anonymizing data, taking detailed notes about data and tools etc. (Tzanova, 2020, p. 289).
Potential instructional topics: bibliography and data management, applying metadata, choosing a data repository, identifying appropriate open research methods and tools; open access publishing, citing open data, copyright (Tzanova, 2020, p. 289).
Detailing existing Open Science policies at other institutions and advocating for them in their own organization
References
About. (n.d.). Open Science Chain. https://www.opensciencechain.org/about
About. (n.d.). openlabnotebooks.org. https://openlabnotebooks.org/about/
Allen, C. and Mehler, D. (2019). Open science challenges, benefits and tips in early career and beyond. PLOS Biology, 17(5), e3000246. https://doi-org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000246
Center for Open Science. (2017). Center for Open Science Strategic Plan 2017-2020. https://osf.io/x2w9h/
European Open Science Cloud. (n.d.). European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/open-science/european-open-science-cloud-eosc_en
Mission. (n.d.). Center for Open Science. https://www.cos.io/about/mission
National Institute of Health. (2020). Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-21-013.html
Open Science Data Federation. (n.d.). Open Science Grid. https://opensciencegrid.org/about/osdf/
Pontika, N., Knoth, P., Cancellieri, M. and Pearce, S. (2015). Fostering Open Science to Research using a Taxonomy and an eLearning Portal. iKnow: 15th International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data Driven Business, n.p. https://doi.org/10.1145/2809563.2809571
Scheliga, K. and Friesike, S. (2014). Putting Open Science Into Practice: A Social Dilemma? First Monday, 19(9), n.p. http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i9.5381
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (2021). Draft Recommendation On Open Science. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000378841/PDF/378841eng.pdf.multi
Tzanova, Stefka. (2020). Changes in academic libraries in the era of Open Science. Education for Information, 36(3), pp. 281-299.
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