Open science and its future prospects from the point of view of a Law researcher
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.