About me: I’m Luca Cominardi and I’m undertaking my PhD in Telematics Engingeering at UC3M. I’m currently working at IMDEA Networks as research assistant.
Disclaimer: this is not a resume of the Open Science Workshop held on May 13th, 2015 at UC3M. I unleashed my thoughts about Open Science, raised questions to myself and tried to figure out some answers based on Workshop discussion.
What happens when you have to do some extra work for getting some ECTS for your PhD? Well, you’re not very happy about that. Mainly because the life of a PhD student is usually frenetic, scheduled by a huge number of deadlines, stressful with no so much spare time and you’re not very positive at the idea of dealing some extra work.
At least, let’s try to make something useful and interesting for getting these ECTS and obtain some new ideas. When I was looking for the different options proposed by the university, one captured my attention: «FOSTER: Winning Horizon2020 with Open Science». I know what Horizon2020 is because I have been involved for several years in FP7 projects. Besides, I was totally missing the meaning of FOSTER and Open Science. So, I gave a try to this option by attending the Workshop.
Open Science turns out to be a very comprehensive view about scientific research. It spans over Open Access, Open Data, Open Source, Open Methodology and Open Peer Review. I heard something about that in the past but I’ve never gone deep into the topic, nor linked them together under the same umbrella. What is Open Science? And what is its goal?
Citing from Wikipedia [1]:
Open science is the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or professional. It encompasses practices such as publishing open research, campaigning for open access, encouraging scientists to practice open notebook science, and generally making it easier to publish and communicate scientific knowledge.
It’s really a noble statement. Scientific research is nothing without dissemination. If you perform some kind of research and you don’t share your results, you are not doing research, you are deploying your own product. What’s the point of not sharing your research? Are you frightened that someone might steal your work? If so, you should ask to yourself why you are doing research. And what is the purpose of that.
In my vision (sometimes a bit utopian) everyone’s research must be of public domain and shared with the community. What’s the point of not sharing your results? Who is the beneficiary of your research? With a bit of luck (and lot of efforts), your research may have a great impact on the community and society. Similarly, someone else’s research may have a great impact on you. Research should follow do ut des (give-and-take) philosophy. It’s not ethical to take without giving. This ethical aspect surely has long been debated and it’s not easy to give a concise definition of a fair balance between give and take. In this post I want to be more pragmatic than philosophic, so let’s put aside the ethical debate and let’s analyse briefly the situation in Europe nowadays.
The European Commission is funding several European Projects which involve both academic and industrial partners. Why industries are involved in research projects? The answer is pretty straightforward. Research leads to a economic growth and the industries are the engine carrying such growth. Nevertheless, if the industries are the engine, universities are the ignition system. We need a strong operation between industries and companies, and the European Commission is aware of that. Furthermore, EC believes that Open Science should pave the way of research in Europe [2].
Nowadays, it is widely recognised that making research results more accessible contributes to better and more efficient science, and to innovation in the public and private sectors.
As I stated before, if you don’t share your research, you are not doing research, you are developing your own product. But this is exactly what industries do, isn’t it? So, how can we reconcile industries and research world? Why industries should adopt Open Science philosophy? Industries are not inclined to share their results (nor their data). Who should lead the adoption of Open Science? Should Open Science adoption be driven by common feelings or should it be imposed? Most of the times, people care only about their own interests and not about the community making it difficult to change their mind. For this reason, I believe that a European Commission directives are the most efficient means to adopt Open Science in Europe.
The introduction of such directives has been already planned for European Projects. Making directives is good starting point but it’s not enough for effectively adopting Open Science. I believe that a common platform should be developed for industries and universities providing a dedicated support for both. It’s not only a matter of providing Open Access to research results. There are several Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues that must be addressed in case of collaboration between industries and universities. If we want Open Science really catching on, universities and industries should be actively supported (maybe by the European Commission or some institution in her behalf). Nobody is willing to bear the cost of building the required infrastructure for Open Science on its own. Do-ut-des.
The path towards Open Science is still long and full of pitfalls. We can reach a real Open Science environment only if everyone walks step by step in the right direction. How can I be part of that? As engineer working with Open Source software, I’ve already been contributing to several Open Source projects and some of my code has already been published. Starting from this, I think that Open Data will be definitely my next step. However, I’m still far to fully embrace Open Science philosophy. As I said before «step by step». The hashtag #IamAnOpenScientistBecause should be used by all the people who really feel Open Scientists. Though, I’m not ready to use such tag yet, I shall instead use a slightly modified version. #IamAGrowingOpenScientistBecause I believe that Open Science is the right path to follow for everyone and for the sake of community and society, but it’s still too early for me to be a full Open Scientist.
At the beginning I was a bit sceptical regarding the Workshop, but at the end I have to say that I had a very positive feelings. A lot of efforts are being put in Open Science, but in order to make it successful, research community has to be aware of it and later on start using it. The dissemination activities carried out by FOSTER project seem to be effective and going straight to the point regarding the academic world. But what about industries?