Month: July 2021

In this course, I have learned that the Open Science is one of the most advanced ways of studying and exchanging science, as discussion and participation helps to better understand and increase information.
Open science is the practice of science in a way in which others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab observations, and other research processes are available, under conditions that allow for reuse, redistribution, and reproduction of basic data and scientific methods.
We need open science to share knowledge, data and tools as early as possible in the research process in open collaboration with all relevant knowledge actors .in addition to that open science has the potential to increase quality and efficiency of R&I, creativity and trust .

As a personal opinion, I believe open methods are worthwhile, positive, necessary, and inevitable but can come at a cost that ECRs would do well to consider We also emphasize that there are obstacles, particularly for the ECR. The adoption of open practices requires a change in attitude and productivity expectations, which need to be considered by academics at all levels, as well as funders. Yet, taken together, I think that capitalizing on the benefits is a good investment for both the ECR and science and should be encouraged where possible. A response to pervasive failures to replicate previous research makes the transition to open science methods necessary, and despite the challenges, early adoption of open practices will likely pay off for both the individual and science.
Three benefits can get from open science, Greater faith in research , New helpful systems and Investment in your future, On the other hand open science may be faced with three challenges ,Restrictions on flexibility,The time cost and incentive structures isn’t in the place yet.

As for my plans during the period of the doctoral study, I will publish my research papers and results in public to be available to researchers and relevant beneficiaries to develop their work from the latest findings. In the end, I would like to thank the respected professors, especially Dr. Eva, for the important and valuable information they provided that made me more understanding of the meaning of open science.

In STEM where I belong, complaints about how inefficient, expensive and unfair the state of the current publishing system is are very common. Nevertheless, this is the only way of publishing we have known and the infrastructure that supports it seems to be so powerful and unavoidable, we resign ourselves and succumb to it. I want to show my gratitude to the team that has made this course possible for teaching us that there are alternatives out there to Closed Science that are being encouraged by a determined community who is working hard to make Open Science a core value of the future of science.

One of the things I loved the most about this course is how we learn about not only the tools and resources that are used to manage open science nowadays such as Core , Dimensions and Lens; but the political, social and ethical changes that come with the transition  to open science. For example, I had to take this course to realize how institutions and governments sometimes have to pay thrice for research under closed science since they have to fund this research, pay for this research to be published in a journal and then pay again to read the final version of the article in the journal. Luckily, this course has also taught me that Open Science may end this cycle and help us to finally achieve actual public research with their results available for every citizen and institution who committed money for them.

As a researcher on applied mathematics, I have wasted a prodigious amount of time because the code of most algorithms, datasets and the parsing routines of  those datasets weren’t available to the public. This probably shouldn’t happen if the researchers who previously worked on these algorithms and datasets would have followed a DMP (Data Management Plan) which would have helped them make their data and software FAIR (Fair Accessible Interoperable and Reusable). Making this kind of practice more common (As the Horizon Europe funding programme is encouraging European researchers to do) will surely help us be less redundant in our efforts and achieve a more efficient collaboration between researchers all around the world.

My thesis involves an immensity of different codes and data and till this moment, I feel that it has  slipped my mind how this data and materials have been managed. So after taking the course, I have made the determination to work in the next few months in a DMP which helps me make my work FAIR. In order to do this I will surely ask for the help of  UC3M UniOs.

Even though some of the technicalities and resources given in this course may fall between the cracks, I am glad I’ve taken it. Learning about Open Science has made me realize the importance of good and ethical documentation practices in order to make my research practical and relevant.

Open science provides new opportunities to build knowledge, creating new methodologies and work dynamics for researchers. The definition of open science has not been still consolidated, but most speakers, at the different webinars held during this course, agree on the fact that open science is a movement that intends to make research accessible to society, strengthening the dissemination of scientific knowledge or involving citizens in research projects. The rise of data management tools, such as online search engines, makes this knowledge available for an increasing number of people worldwide, as it was analysed at the second webinar. Initiatives such as Eurodoc, a federation of national organisations which represent young researchers in European countries, show that the European Union can play a significant role in the dissemination of science and the social recognition of researchers, improving their studying and working conditions, as it was described at the third webinar. The FAIR data, which were explained at the fourth webinar, adjust scientific information to principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability, in order to increase the transparency of research processes and promote the use of their results for the common good.

In my opinion, open science is a good way to correct some methodological problems and biases of academic and official institutions which do research. The streetlight effect is one of the most crucial problems which research faces nowadays, because researchers often tend to look for answers to their problems in fields well illuminated by scientific indicators, while ignoring a wider space of research that remains in the dark. In this sense, recruiting citizens for open science projects can broaden the space researched by scientists, because the higher number of people takes part in a project, the higher volume of information will be available on the studied problem. This way of working may enable the observation of certain facts or make unexpected discoveries. Other advantage of open science is tackling problems such as the misapplication of narrow criteria and indicators of research quality or impact, which have reduced the diversity of research missions and purposes, as we were taught at the sixth webinar. The participation of citizens who do not come from an academic background –and, therefore, are not influenced by those criteria and indicators– can offer a different perspective in scientific activity, because most participants in open science projects do not have an interest on publishing results in a scientific review or gaining impact factor with scientific articles.

Historically, open science has been employed to create scientific networks in times when advanced technological infrastructures, such as the Internet, did not exist or were at the experimental stage, as we saw at the fifth webinar. One of the earliest projects of open science was the Deutscher Sprachatlas (Atlas of German Language), developed by the German linguist Georg Wenker in the late 19th century. Wenker’s method consisted in sending letters to many people living in different places of Germany and receiving their responses later, in order to register the dialects which were spoken in Germany at that time. Another interesting example of open science appeared in the 1970s, when researchers came to understand the migration of monarch butterflies, requesting the collaboration of citizens to recover butterflies previously tagged by scientists. Besides this, open science promotes the social recognition of scientific research and improves the dissemination of its results, because networks of citizens who collaborate in open science projects not only can improve their scientific knowledge, but also became science advocates and recruit more contributors to these projects (for example, involving people from their social environment, such as their relatives, friends or acquaintances).

Open science contains a great potential for exploring new fields of research, but has some drawbacks which may limit its use in certain contexts. In my opinion, one of the main drawbacks in my field of research (Law) is the fact that many legal scholars are not used to work with this methodology, because open science projects are seldom incorporated into the curricula of Law faculties and doctorate programmes. Legal-dogmatic research, which explains legal rules using their internal logic and principles formulated by authoritative experts, is one of the most used methodologies in Law studies, especially in countries with civil law systems such as Spain. However, legal-dogmatic research does not favour the participation of citizen teams involved in studying how legal rules are implemented in society, because it tends to focus on theoretical analysis of Law, giving lesser importance to questions such as the social perception of legal rules or the sociologic factors which influence on their application. Moreover, the complexity of legal concepts makes them fully understandable only for a small group of specialists, so a pedagogic effort would be necessary to teach some legal notions to citizens taking part in an open science project in the field of Law. Therefore, it is necessary that scholars make up the limitations and biases of legal-dogmatic research with statistics and other field data, involving citizens in collecting information related to the implementation of legal rules in society.

As a Ph.D. candidate specialised in illicit trafficking on cultural property, an area especially related to Criminal Law, I would like to use open science to broaden and improve the scarce statistics which most States collect on this criminal phenomenon worldwide, addressing a problem that has been noted by international organizations such as UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). For example, studies could be done involving people living in different areas rich in archaeological sites within a country, in order to study archaeological looting, which is one of the most usual activities related to illicit trafficking. This way, people could not only denounce acts of plunder and destruction committed in these sites to law enforcement authorities, but also report them to researchers, in order to determine the most endangered sites due to the action of traffickers and criminal groups who steal archaeological pieces. Finally, researchers could create a risk map for archaeological sites and rank them on a scale of risk, according to the higher or lower number of criminal actions or offences reported by citizens in each one. This risk map could make the fight of authorities against archaeological looting more efficient, because the local population can monitor certain places (for example, archaeological sites which are in difficult access areas, such as rugged mountains, or scarcely populated regions) more often and easier than police officers or archaeologists. Another benefit of such a project would be raising awareness on the protection of archaeological heritage, because the involvement of citizens in this task increases their consciousness on the cultural value of a type of goods which are often hidden underground, but provide us relevant scientific knowledge about past civilizations and cultures, allowing us discovering our historical origins and building our cultural identity. This is only one of the many possibilities which open science, in my opinion, offers to Law researchers interested in the improvement of law enforcement and the fight against crime.

I had no thoughts open science until I saw the news about developing countries asking for IP waiver for Covid-19 vaccines. Almost at the same time, I came across this course and decided to register so that I can get to know more about the pros and cons of keeping science open.

This course gave me a lot of insights into the world of open science which I didn’t know about and did not appreciate before. Earlier, like the majority, I was behind high impact factor journals for publications. But after taking this course, I felt I need to rethink this approach as I feel that open science will have a wide range of audience and more access especially in developing countries. Open access gives academics in developing counties the opportunity to participate in the international research community—and that creates more potential for new ideas and innovation, which is a necessity especially during a situation like covid.

I believe open science can benefit researchers that work especially on technological development. For instance, I from Materials Science and Engineering, work on developing a new category of materials called ´High Entropy Alloys´, in search of better properties and increasing the temperature limits of existing materials. But many of the information on literature is proprietary which hinders my research. There is a technique called Additive Manufacturing, where we use metal powders to build a final product layer-by-layer. The optimised process parameters for this technique are not revealed in most of the literatures for high entropy alloys because of which we need to spend more time and money figuring it out ourselves even though we are all working for the same cause. If they were open, it would help me accelerate my research and of course I would credit the original authors for their work. So, when I have my results, I am planning to make it open so that other researchers can benefit from this while making sure I also get credited for my work.

The more I got into the course, I realized open science is a complex topic. Open science, as of now, is not free of limitations. For instance, freely releasing scientific data could harm the chance for obtaining a patent. There is also a chance that data might be misused by the public. The cost to publish in open access journals is too high at times without any added recognition (that you get from closed journals) that discourages researchers. So, I feel there should be a proper infrastructure developed to support open science which must also ensure the quality of data that goes open along with solving the above problems.

Moreoever, in one of the sessions, we learned about citizen science where non-academic public take part in research for example, by observing, processing or gathering data. This is the first time I am hearing this term and even though it is difficult to be practiced in my domain due to the prior technical knowledge it requires, I learnt how useful it can be in fostering open science. It actually is both an aim and enabler of open science. But I feel that citizens can introduce bias into the data if they lack prior training in research. Also, scientists usually lack close relationship with common citizens and can sometimes miscalculate their behavior. These effects should be considered by scientists before asking volunteers to aid in their research. In recent times, I have seen that the public trust in science is diminishing. A section of people hesitant about getting vaccinated against covid-19, and a group of people who still believe earth is flat and are not ready to listen to science are few examples. So, the citizen science initiative can address such challenges and regenerate societal trust in science, enable easier access to information about research process (an aim of open science) and stimulate innovation by knowledge transfer.

It is a positive thing that I got to know about open science early during my PhD so that I can try to implement it during the rest of my research period. I will also try to publish my results in open access journals whenever possible. In one of the sessions, we were briefed about EuroDoc which is a conference for early stage researchers and discusses open science policies. I intend to attend it online this year. Overall, this course has been insightful for me and I thank the teachers and hosts who took their time to share their knowledge with us. I also appreciate how UC3M is committed to helping us become an open scientist and I am looking forward to it.

 

 

 

Honestly, as a lawyer, I was very unfamiliar with the correct idea of what “open science” meant and its importance in disseminating knowledge. Today, I would venture to say that open science is a movement to do scientific research, which may include publications, data, among other things, and its dissemination accessible to society. This way of approaching science includes the data obtained, especially scientific knowledge produced with public funds.
In class, we saw essential elements to access this type of knowledge. In particular, Open Access publications were analyzed (class 2), in which search results in online search engines for publications were communicated and analyzed. Naturally, many factors have enhanced the possibility of accessing this open knowledge, but, above all, the technologies. In order to be open access, it must be digital, online, and free of economic barriers or copyright on published works. In particular, this class provided much practical information on how to access the material.
Regarding session 3, I was very interested in the Eurodoc continental process, which is a federation of national organizations of young researchers in the European Union for those who do not know it. Young researchers are doctoral candidates (early-stage researchers) or recent doctoral graduates in their first years of their postdoctoral research career (postdoctoral researchers). As a non-profit organization, Eurodoc addresses the situation of young researchers in Europe from different aspects (e.g. academic mobility, working conditions, career paths, supervision, and doctoral training). Additionally, the annual conferences will be held in hybrid form (virtual and on-site).
I believe that the fourth meeting was the most important one, in which we made contact with FAIR data. The acronym groups the four principles that give its meaning, referring to precise and measurable qualities that every formal data publication should have: “Findable”, which it is accompanied by metadata that identifies, describes, and allows the data to be located; “Accessible”, because it can be retrieved through standardized communication protocols and the metadata persists even when the data is no longer available; “Interoperable”, in the sense that it is presented in a way that is applicable and includes references to other data; “Reusable”, since it can be reused, because the provenance of the data and the conditions for its reuse are clear.
In the fifth class on “Citizen Science and Public Engagement”, I found the idea of citizen science as scientific research that has the active involvement of the lay public along with scientists and practitioners fascinating. This is an aspect of research that is growing a lot. Such is this that on April 6th, the European platform EU-Citizen Science was launched to exchange knowledge, tools, training, and resources for citizen science.
In the last session, we analyzed the convenience of making our possible doctoral thesis accessible through the institutional repository of the UC3M, since this gives us European visibility, collaborating in the socialization of information.
In short lines, I wanted to mention the issues that most caught my attention and that I liked in each class. I think it is a field of knowledge that, honestly, is new to me because of my background, I think it is applicable in the sense of field study. As you know, the law is a social science, and its approach must be scientific. The collection of data with specific parameters for doctoral research can serve for further studies for future researchers who “stand on our shoulders” to achieve a critical analysis of the status quo and manage to contribute elements that help to improve the field of study and, through it, society as a whole.

I plan to become an Open Scientist because I believe OS has so many benefits, as we learned along the course, including:  increasing collaboration and sharing, more access to knowledge for all, creating greater opportunities for innovation and participation in the co-creation of knowledge, fostering transparency and inclusiveness, allowing reuse of works and data but also crediting the authors, helping us solve the many challenges we face us humans in a timely manner, obtaining economic benefits and better return on public investments, reducing duplication of costs by allowing reuse of data and materials, creating social impact of research and widening circulation of findings, allowing citizens to participate in research and creating the basis for a more democratic access to knowledge (UNESCO, 2020).  

In Session 2 about Open Access we explored different topics I was very familiar with, for example I already publish my research in open access journals and oa repositories. But I realized that I had a vague understanding of “open peer review” and, reading the suggested papers, I learned that there are many “flavors” including 22 configurations of 7 traits of open peer review: open identities, open reports, open participation, open interaction, open pre-review manuscripts, open final-version commenting, open platforms or “decoupled review”. The first two traits are the most common, but all together they help to solve problems associated with traditional peer review such as unreliability and inconsistency, delay , high expense, lack of accountability, biases, lack of incentives among others (Ross-Hellauer, T. 2017). I plan to explore the options for publishing in an open access journal which also has open peer review, for example “Publications”, but the latter is not a “diamond” OA publication.

Exploration of tools proposed on Session 3 led me to try the Lens.org database, among others. I  was delighted to learn that I was able to create a dashboard and analyze an institution’s publications including OA indicators. For example, I can see that there was an increase in OA publications since Argentina has a  National Mandate starting at the end of 2013. My PhD research includes bibliometric studies and I plan to use  Lens.org  as one of my data sources. We also learned the importance of persistent identifiers (PIDs), specially managing our researcher presence in different platforms by using ORCID ID, which I added to BASE and my ResearchGate and Academica.edu and Google Scholar profiles. I also was able to add my ORCID ID to some of my outputs in OpenAIRE, but not all, depending on the content provider, that was puzzling. Besides, I explored OSF and found many interesting projects related to my research such as “FAIR4Health”,  “The Open Scholarship Survey (OSS)”, “On open science practices in information systems (IS) research”, a project about OA in Argentina, “Faculty Use and Opinions of Open Access Publishing at University of Denver”. I plan to create a project at OSF for my thesis.

The CESSDA Data Management Expert Guide was very detailed with many examples and templates. It made me consider what other researchers and potential re-users will need in order to understand my data. We need to document and share about the doctoral project itself and data-level documentation, including types of data (survey, etc.) file type and formats (preferably open formats), size, data processing scripts  and quantities.  Regarding metadata, I plan to share the data from my thesis (social science) and use the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata standard specific for Social Sciences. 

In order to learn from data sharing good practices in my field of study, I searched for datasets related to my theses in DataCite. I found some examples “Innovations in scholarly communication – data of the global 2015-2016 survey”, “Data from Open access levels: a quantitative exploration using Web of Science and oaDOI data”, “OA Diamond Journals Study. Dataset” and “Medición del Acceso Abierto Consorcio Madroño (2015-2019)“. In each case I observed not only the metadata attached, but also data-level documentation, data formats (open formats, original files, etc.), readme files where they explained the dataset, terms of use including open licenses. 

I was pleased to learn the many services UC3M offers in terms of Open Science (Session 6). I found a few of my previous publications in e-Archivo and plan to deposit more there. I want to share my data in e-cienciaDatos  Repositorio de Datos UC3M,  which uses Dataverse software with DDI metadata for citation, project and data documentation, as well as licensing options, and other aspects of a trusted repository. I would like this repository to offer CoreTrustSeal or similar certification, considering that COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) , CoreTrustSeal, the European University Association, Science Europe and the World Data System have published a joint position statement on “Data Repository Selection – Criteria That Matter”. 

Learning about Citizen Science was eye opening because I now understand there are principles for meaningful citizen participation. I started to search for opportunities to apply this type of collaboration. We are exploring options for citizen science in a research project related to sustainable food production in Rosario and remote sensing horticulture data. 

One apparent downside of OS practices is that it is time consuming, but it is worth it. Planning and documenting your research and DMP takes a lot of effort, making your data FAIR requires upfront commitment for preparing, assigning metadata and archiving your data in a trusted repository (Allen, 2019). On the other hand, as users, we have experienced the great benefit of having a well documented dataset made public for reuse, and we published a paper (Bongiovani et al., 2012) using well documented data of a larger dataset (Dallmeier-Tiessen, Suenje, et al., 2011). 

The main drawback for practicing OS is the way evaluation of research works right now, with evaluation and promotion criteria that doesn’t favor open science. In general, evaluators favor traditional metrics such as high impact factors (Pagliaro, 2021). As PhD students we are expected to publish our research in prestigious publications and many of them are not open access or require to pay high APF (article processing fees). In order to be OS researchers we have to consider very carefully where to publish. 

We learned that the landscape is slowly changing and there are several initiatives raising awareness and advocating to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics as the main parameter to evaluate the scientific output of individuals, groups and institutions.

Signing the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is a way to promote new practices. There are universities committed to that change, such as Utrecht University where faculty will be evaluated by their contribution to open science. As explained by Leiden Manifesto we have to abandon obsolete reward systems. Prof. Eva Mendez eloquently demonstrated in her graphic that the reward systems are at the root of OS, incentives must be coherent with OS policies. That is the key for OS practices to be mainstream.

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References 

Allen, C., & Mehler, D. M. (2019). Open science challenges, benefits and tips in early career and beyond. PLoS biology, 17(5), e3000246. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000587 

Bosman, J., & Kramer, B. (2016). Innovations in scholarly communication – data of the global 2015-2016 survey [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.49583 

CESSDA Training Team (2017 – 2020). CESSDA Data Management Expert Guide.

Bergen, Norway: CESSDA ERIC. Retrieved from https://www.cessda.eu/DMGuide 

Kramer, Bianca, & Bosman, Jeroen. (2018). Data from: Open access levels: a quantitative exploration using Web of Science and oaDOI data [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1143707

Pagliaro, M. (2021). Purposeful evaluation of scholarship in the open science era. Challenges, 12(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/challe12010006 

Ross-Hellauer, T. (2017). What is open peer review? A systematic review. F1000Research, 6. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2 

I read once an article comparing networking among businesses and NGOs. The article belonged to a business journal, and was written by a person of the business world with the purpose of calling upon businesses to learn from NGOs strengths. Among others, distinct networks, cooperation and partnership, instead of competing. In addition, the author highlighted the advantages for businesses to partner with NGOs instead of opposing to them. At that time, since I had little experience working with NGOs, I agreed with the author’s opinion and I believed this was an interesting point, but I did not give it more thought than that.

Nowadays, after being introduced to Open Science, I can see how this market competition logic could be a real barrier to research and innovation, and that there is an urgent need of change behind this issue. Whilst for businesses, the value of information and knowledge rests on keeping that information to themseelves and not sharing it with others so that they can remain first in the market; NGOs build huge networks and create space to share ideas, projects, knowledge and resources. In addition, for companies to partner with NGOs means to learn how to reinforce ethics in business and to pursue not only economic profit, but social causes and justice.

Here you can check this article out Turning Gadflies into Allies

The way I see it, Open Science aims this exact transition from the business model towards NGOs networking, applied to the immense field of research. In a nutshell, Open Science aims to combat the closeness of research to build up a more accessible and fair space for researchers.

In this regard, although I barely have two years of experience in research, I am aware of the many limitations that researchers have to face throughout the whole research process, because at some point, I faced them myself.

First of all; Methodologies. It is still really hard to me to truly embrace the idea of methodology; to think about how to approach the topic, what is the most innovative and interesting angle. Second; How to write a clear and interesting key research question. This is indeed a very (maybe the most) important part of the research, because it builds the subject of the study. Third; how to collect and analyse relevant data. And finally, finding the adequate literature and having access to it. Researchers that are part of a big research institution have access to important journals and useful articles, and at the same time, they will get more chances to eventually publish in those prestigious journals, for which they hold high pressure. On the other hand, researchers with no funding that belongs to no research institution, will probably face many difficulties to find proper sources. This, undoubtedly, brings up serious unequal opportunities for researchers. The close access of publishers, journals and academia in general critically jeopardises research dynamics, resulting in walls raised against scientific progress.

However, this course on Open Science has been an eye-opener to a new reality full of hope: it is possible a change in the way we do research nowadays. A more accessible, interoperable, shareable and fair way of doing research. Open Science means not only to have public open access to useful publications, but to be opened to share knowledge from the beginning of the research process through the elaboration of Data Management Plans, in which researches share, and periodically update, how they have developed ideas, methodology, how they came up to research questions, how to collect, store and analyse data, how to interpret findings. Open Science also includes, according to UNESCO, Open Source, Open software and hardware, Open evaluation, Crow-funding, Open Lab, Open Educational Resources, Open Innovation, etc.

Many tools and digital spaces are being created to make Open Science real. There are different open access routes (gold, green, bronze, black and diamond), open social networks (research-gate, academia.edu) open repositories (ArXiv, Europe PubMed Central, Cogprints, RePec, Zenodo, universities, etc.), open science publishers (Open Research Europe) and journals.

Furthermore, initiatives at the institutional level are being adopted to contribute to the transition towards Open Science. For example, the Horizon Europe 2020 programme within the European Union, for which the European Research Council is a flagship component, and the Open Research Europe is the open access publishing service. Many associations are also advocating for Open Science and providing training courses to use open access tools. For instance, ECSA (European Citizen Science Association).

Open Science aims to combat the abusive practices within research, such as the need to pay even three times for having access to publications (the public funding through taxes, the new payment models and the price to access libraries and journals). It aims to tackle the need to also pay for publishing, the constant pressure to publish in academia, and the risk of funding cuts. It also aims that authors always keep their copyrights and that publisher companies do not retain them through exclusive rights agreements.

Nevertheless, despite the advantages that Open Science brings to research, it goes without saying that there are still many challenges to address: For instance, debates over certain open access fees and hybrid systems, the need for researchers to getting familiar with a completely new vision of research, which requires a different mindset, and learning how to use new -and not always simple- tools, data management systems, repositories, publishers, etc. This new conception of research will need to go through a transitional period, full of mistakes and setbacks, but that will eventually conduct us to a more advanced, open and fair way of doing research.

Njoud Maaitah

If I want to summarize this course in one sentence I will say that “The monopoly of information is the biggest obstacle to development”. From this course, I have learned the meaning of Open Science which is considered a systematic shift in science and research practices, with implications for the whole research cycle and its stakeholders. In contrast to closed science, I understand that OS is conducted and presented in such a way that others may participate, cooperate, and join the research endeavor, with all types of data, findings, and methods freely available at all stages of the research process.

After finishing this seminar, I think that almost everyone believes that “open science” will be the way of the research future. What do we do when we’re presented with a difficult scientific problem that we can’t solve? Many of us would approach our colleagues and seek their opinion. Our professional network is beneficial. It is also restricted. Perhaps there are people in another institution or firm, in a different country, who can help us, but we don’t know who they are. Isn’t it true that if we could reach those folks, science would advance more quickly? Or, even better, if they were able to locate us?

Regarding my field, Computer Science, sharing software or research materials with others can assist the discipline to avoid duplicating research efforts and boost cross-lab collaboration. It may also help to raise work visibility. From another hand, Open research provides verification through peer review and clear timeframes. There is also an educational component to this: when code and data are public, it is possible to replicate the results given in papers, which aids comprehension. Fundamentally, replication of discoveries is essential to open research and crucial to enhancing dependability, which benefits scientists at all levels. One of the things that I liked, the DMILawTool which was introduced through this course, it simplifies the legal aspect of data management.

Although there are several advantages to open science as mentioned above, it is undeniable that it necessitates some more time and work, particularly at the outset of a project. Fortunately, internet resources and peer and institutional assistance can help to offset some of these expenses. However, there may be another ‘cost’ or danger. Other researchers may find mistakes if they reanalyze our data or utilize our scripts or software. Obviously, many efforts will try to eliminate such risks. At the same time, we must realize that we are just human and that mistakes will occur.

and that what comes to my mind in the first moment, when the wonderful professor Eva was talking about the basic concepts of open science, I asked myself whether making everything open does not carry any risks to the idea, and by that I mean the rights of the owner, because the concept of open science promotes projects to be open to the public, But after reading more I found that there is something called Open Science Framework(OSF), and it became clear to me that there are ways to keep portions of a project private through OSF. A toggle option on the research project overview page lets individuals with administrator-level rights on the project choose whether certain elements of the project (if not all) will be public or private. Private projects, in general, are not searchable. Users can look for public projects on the internet. Certain parts of a public project can be made private, and they will be concealed from view. The OSF also offers project-level metrics, such as unique visits, downloads per project file, and top referrers, to help measure the effect. So Costs or risks associated with good and open science can be mitigated at institutional or research council levels.

I am planning to follow the steps below to be an Open Scientist:

One: I will try to find many researchers who have the same interests as me, and I will add them through ResearchGate, social media like Twitter, and Fb. Also, I will try to register with groups to post my research ideas and questions.

Second: I will share my research idea with tools and explain my research problem with other researchers. I will be interested in their opinions and their questions from the beginning, I will be grateful if someone gives me advice regards increasing the efficiency of my idea.

Third: I will try to convert my previous research works from closed to open. I will upload my source code, data sets, and results code on Github and share it with other researchers.

Forth: overleaf will be my drafting tool for any next research.

Fifth: my data will be shared through Dryed

And finally, When I finished my work, I will try to publish it through an open journal to be open access.

References

https://fredvbrug.github.io/openScience.html

Willinsky, J. (2005). The unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science.

I believe that my career as a researcher really began in the last year of my degree (3 years ago), working on my bachelor’s degree Thesis. The strong point of this project was to combine and apply knowledge from my field of expertise (electronic engineering) to concepts that were not so directly related and totally unknown to me at that time (such as hydrogels and their complex chemical concepts). At that time, I wanted to know everything that was known to date about these elements that resembled soft sweets and their electrical behaviour.

That’s when my first question as a researcher arose: how can I achieve such knowledge if many of the articles I find on the internet have restricted access? As some of my colleagues have commented in their respective posts, I understood publications as a means of disseminating knowledge in order to be reused and expanded by others. Therefore, I did not understand the reason for such restricted access.

Also, among other questions, I asked myself, is there a search platform(s) that can compile articles published in different journals and make them easily searchable and accessible? I was aware of several article search tools, but I was interested in the idea of a tool in which all publications would be open access.

Today, in my first year as a pre-doctoral candidate, the Ticket to Open Science course has answered many of my questions and, at the same time, has created new concerns for me as a researcher. From all the course sessions, the main idea for me is, above all, some of the practices to promote and participate in the great project that is the Open Science concept: provide open access to research outputs (including either publications or pre-prints, data, algorithms…), ensure reproducibility, open the processes of research output evaluation (open peer-review) and overall involving all relevant knowledge actors, including citizens. Undoubtedly, the session related to this last point of citizen science was one of the most inspiring and interesting, as it also actively encouraged participation among the course participants. For future editions of the course, I would like to highly recommend that, as far as possible and within the tight schedule, more collaborative activities like the one that took place in this session could be organised.

I was also able to learn about many new tools, which I think are very well summarised in the attached image, provided during the course. I am convinced that, as this is my first year as a PhD candidate, as my experience as a researcher progresses, I will find even more usefulness in these tools that will surely push my work to the next level.

Finally, I would like to comment that recently and at the same time as the course was taking place, I have been able to successfully publish my first article (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/s21134414) in the journal Sensors from MDPI, which is Gold Open Access. Thanks to this course I have a better understanding of what this concept entails. However, I must say that when we were talking in some of the course sessions about APCs, I honestly did not expect them to be that high (around 2 grand)! I believe that these costs should be lowered as much as possible to definitely boost and give real meaning to the concept of Open Science.