Hello, I was one of the attendants in the workshop Open Science (Horizon2020). It is a pity but it has been the first time I have heard about this topic, which is really interesting. I feel that the Open Science Project is necessary because that is the way to allow people to access the research community results and to avoid the possibility of researchers working simultaneously in the same specific topic without knowing each other. That is why I think that we need at least our public institutions to regulate several details at the time of publishing in order to help this movement. In fact, it should be obligatory for the researchers to place their published results in an open repository.

As I am right know involved in my PhD, this topic is very important for me. Any manifesto or law related to this topic could modify my current way of developing my scientific research. Open Science is a way to help to improve the research’s quality and quantity and this is what makes it be rather important for the European program Horizon2020.

In my PhD, I will develop and suggest different control strategies which will be previously simulated. This work involves data management, but nothing compared to the next step. These proposals will be also tested in one of our Department laboratories and each real simulation will involve a higher amount of data crucial for the thesis. Before this workshop, my idea was using them, probably until the PhD defense, and storing them in a device which will allow me and my colleagues to come back at any time and have access to the data of all the tests which will take part of my studies. However, it is true that these data should be available for the community, placed in a public repository for example. This will give the researchers the opportunity to use the data available and to detect any mistake.

I have spoken about making the researchers data available and that makes me think about two ideas. When and how should we do it? On one hand, another attendant of the course made a very good comment on my first question and I agreed with him. When we generate data, as a result of test or simulations for instance, we need time to analyze all the information. Because of that issue, we are not going to share our data with anybody who is not involved in our project or research. It is once we finish studying our results when we should share both, the data we have generated and the results we have achieved. On the other hand, how should we do it? In my opinion, the institution should be the one responsible for encouraging the open science support. They should fund and build a public repository which accommodates all kinds of data and information used by researchers in their research to facilitate its future reuse. In addition, it has been said in the workshop that it would be better to provide a national or a European repository to ease the process of registering and getting its information.

Thinking about the effect of the open Science behavior on the impact of our studies and results, I am sure that it will contribute very much in the progress of research. Even if our conclusions are not useful for possible future study, I am sure that our data could be profitable and it would add citations to our work. Besides, our results will be probably more extended because people should not have to pay to acquire them.

Moreover, I would like to express my surprise when I got to know the amount of money that is paid by the Spanish universities to the famous journals and publishing entities to acquire the up to date researches yearly.

Finally, I want to remark that there are some Open Science services provided by our institution and our library which were unknown for me before the workshop.

#IamAnOpenScientistBecause transparency is needed and free access should be a right.