Month: June 2024

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“Ser/Estar” Open Science

Through the Ticket to Open Science course, it was possible to note that doing open science goes beyond terminologies and institutional demands, we can assume it as a philosophical concept of “Ser/Estar”, expressions in Portuguese that define a continuous and lasting state.

From our own experience, when carrying out daily scientific activities we can put such issues in the background, after all, we are always looking to fulfill the demands inherent to Science, such as writing, analyses, publications, reports, etc. However, through the learning we had during the course, we acquired the ability to project open science questions into our scientifc daily lives, in a more natural way.

For me, the main learning was certainly about planning and managing research data. It is certainly an essential step in every researcher’s workflow, not only because it has become an institutional requirement, but also because it calls into question the issue of preserving such important data, the reproducibility of the research and also its relevance, potentially generating citations. and consequently beneficially impacting the indices relating to the quality of each person’s scientific production.

Another very pertinent issue for me was the fact that issues of privacy and protection of personal data were mentioned several times, a topic I working on. Thus demonstrating the need to seek reflections on the intersection of these themes with Open Science and the need for improvement in researchers’ good personal data management practices.

And finally, I believe that the best way to say thanks, from now on, is “Ser/Estar” Open Science and above all, to pass on the values ​​presented in the course.

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Open Science: the Collective Advancement of Science

Since I began to take an interest in science, I always liked the idea of sharing the advances that could be achieved through effort and research. At first, it was just an idea, but when I discovered that it had a name and it was Open Science, it became much clearer to me that I wanted to be a part of it. When I saw that the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid was addressing this field and allowed me to increase my knowledge in this area, I saw it as an opportunity to start understanding how to properly use the tools. That’s where everything covered in this fantastic course “Ticket to Open Science” comes in. Open Science is a great revolution in democratizing and socializing science, allowing everyone to participate in the advances being made, not limiting their understanding or their ability to use it to just a handful of people. Access to open science has personally allowed me to access knowledge in certain fields or topics that, at first, I might not have thought would interest me. One of the ideas I particularly like about open science is the lack of competition. Working in research centers can lead us to focus solely on producing redundant results or those with little novelty just to force a publication. Open Science tries to avoid that. The aim is to democratize this knowledge, promoting progress over publication, which in my opinion makes science advance much faster in certain directions of knowledge. In this course, this idea has been made clear, seeking the balance that every researcher must have. Do we seek to publish? Of course, publications give you visibility within your field of specialization, but do we want to promote progress? Absolutely. And that’s where the Open Access tools seen throughout the course come into play. The existence of these tools promotes these advances as they allow for a more global sharing of all the achieved progress. In my personal opinion, it is this duality between a scientific publication and an openness of data, code, or obtained metrics that fosters a double scientific advancement, both in the technical direction and in the direction of opening up to society.

What we have seen during the course?

During the Ticket to Open Science course, we covered a large number of topics related to open science and how to use it in research. The first sessions introduced us to Open Science in a global way, giving us a general overview of what we were going to discuss. We were also given tools to use open science and tips on how to apply it within our research field. We learned about the principles of FAIR data and how to create our own DMP plans, which allowed us to establish what type of data we would handle and how we would manage it during our research. We were also introduced to the internal tools available at UC3M, such as UNiOs and the library support. This was very important as it made us aware that UC3M encourages us to work in open science by providing us with its own tools for it.

The following sessions focused more on the legislative and ethical aspects of open access, emphasizing the need to always maintain ethics in our publications and the open access information we generate. In the last sessions, we were introduced to Citizen Science and public engagement, which was one of the most illustrative parts of the course, highlighting the idea of opening science to everyone so that people from anywhere in the world can participate in the advances. The final session was specifically centered on open science techniques for the engineering field, where we could clarify much more specific doubts about our research and the data we generate in our area of study.

In addition to the lectures, the course included a series of Open Cafes, where experts from different parts of the world, both nationally and internationally, presented us with more concrete cases from all the previously explained fields. These sessions were highly illustrative as they allowed us to see how the open science community is global, and how from different parts of the world there is a focus on developing these tools.

And now what?

Once the course is finished, all that remains is to put everything we’ve learned into practice. But how can I do this? Firstly, all the developments I have been working on during my PhD have been uploaded to an open access platform like GitHub. All the uploaded code is associated with a paper, which we always try to ensure is open access. This allows all the advances made to be viewed both in paper format (which references GitHub) and directly on GitHub (which references the paper). In addition to this, I have started using the tools provided by UC3M and the library, which allows us to upload all the work done to the university’s public repositories so that the university community and anyone else can access these works.

As a final reflection, I would like to add that the existence of these courses promotes the progress of science. These courses can open the minds of different audiences, from university students to professors, encouraging science to raise its voice and demonstrate that together we can achieve much more solid and lasting advances.

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Open Science: the revolution in the socialization of science

A few years ago, when I began to study and research Open Science, most authors relied on the concept that it was an umbrella that recognized the value of open science as accessible, collaborative, and reproducible. This idea shown in the following image continues to have prominence when it comes to explaining Open Science. I share this perspective of Open Science and at this point after everything that has been addressed in the Ticket course to Open Science I consider that Open Science is a true revolution in the socialization of science.

Representation of Open Science by Eva Méndez

From experience I have also been able to verify the benefits of Open Science. I come from Cuba where access to information is restricted by factors inherent to the United States blockade of the island and the Cuban government’s own decisions and this bias interferes with the quality and transparency of science, so in one of the issues of the course, when we were asked if Open Science also involved differences between geographical regions, I took a position in saying that there are indeed differences. Hence, it is one of my motivations to delve into this topic. It is not about competing in “impact factors”, it is about advancing a little more every day in raising awareness and in the daily practices of the academy; democratizing knowledge will depend on the sustainability of Open Science. Although, I am concerned that Data Management Plans, for example, are not common practice and that literacy on these topics is often reduced to theoretical approaches or at least prioritized.

What unites us

We agree that access to information is a universal human right, and the Open Science model constitutes an opportunity to fulfill and guarantee that right in the long term. Currently, there is a greater institutional will to promote processes covered by Open Science. Government structures have been legislated that reinforce work for the common good of access to information and open knowledge. We are aware that everyone must do their part by developing data management plans, participating in groups promoting Open Science, using open tools and software, sharing the results and data of our research, collaborating on projects. research. In this sense, this course brings us closer to tools that I was unaware of and from now on I intend to continue using. The use of data and information repositories, Virtual Learning Environments, the willingness to publish in Open Access journals and advisory services are examples of good practice. On this last point, I am grateful for the meeting that a group had with Raúl Aguilera Ortega, from the UC3M library service, and he told us about policies when publishing in open access journals, as well as databases and repositories, which can be opportunities. in our development as researchers.

Reclaim the common

The progress of science rests on the generation of scientific knowledge as a social-collective process. Strategies from now on must focus on teaching offers, audiences, tools and methods with data intensive science and open science. It is never enough to raise your voice and investigate Open Science; courses like this must be diversified as spaces for debate and with the participation of various specialists who share their knowledge and experiences.