Category: Todos

Open science is a method to distribute knowledge.

First of all, I have to draw your attention to that I have gained an L.L.M degree in private law from Damascus University/ Syria. Besides, the academic environment in the Middle East has depended on a closed science environment, which focuses on publishing papers, few abilities to reach research outcomes, and restrictions to participate from stakeholders. But, after I have joined as a Ph.D. candidate at UC3M and attended many open science courses such as this course, my horizons have been increased in open science scope, which considers as a portal for scientific and research cooperation from the side, and a method for making scientific knowledge available for all stakeholders in a transparent and integrated form in various types of knowledge.

The current course has increased from my knowledge in followed approaches and methods to make researches more open, whether through adding alternative evaluation, sharing posters & presentations, communicating through social media, commenting openly, or using shared reference libraries. Furthermore, I have gained qualifications to make my research subject to FAIR data ( Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), which strongly encourages the open science idea. Finally, I have gained good knowledge in deposit my researches in electronic platforms, whether e-Archivo, InvestigaM, or e-Ciencia, which have been created to encourage open science idea purposes.

Accordingly, I notice that open science is a cross-continental and cross-border means for distributing knowledge and provide it for all stakeholders. Also, it is a direct result of the globalization idea which aims to raise the human society to a high level of knowledge and make the world such as a little village. But, I see that ideal information that has been submitted through the course should be extended from the regional scope to the international scope, where knowledge doors must be opened for all. Thus, we can consider this an obligation on developed countries to invite emerging countries to the open science and practically support them.

In the end, and through the great opportunity that I had in attending the course, I will try to transfer those ideas to a regional area that I belong to and attempt to contribute to platforms that sponsor open science.

Best Regards

Ahmad Atallah

Doing open science in anthropology – what challenges?

Open science aims to bring academic knowledge into the hands of society through a more accessible research process. But what are the challenges of applying this new paradigm to disciplines such as anthropology? Here are some reflections on this debate, which somehow relate to collaborative digital archives, coastal communities’ adaptation to climate change and sexy storytelling.

In 2019, a team of Greek school students discovered a new exoplanet. Building on data made available by a NASA space mission, the teenagers detected a planet in orbit around a distant star from the Kepler space telescope. The students’ astronomical discovery highlighted the benefits of open science, a movement ‘aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone’ (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 2021). Although the new paradigm of open science has become prevalent in the basic and applied sciences, its relevance for the social sciences is controversial. Here, I reflect on three challenges that open science poses to a particular discipline in the social sciences: anthropology.

Open anthropological data – the challenge of confidentiality

‘As open as possible, as close as necessary.’ The motto of open science applies to each stage of the research process, from data collection to methodology to sharing of findings. Let us begin with data accessibility, allowing any member of the academic community to repeat an experiment and test its initial results, or build upon the observations collected by others for an original piece of research.

Anthropology has long been concerned with discussions related to collections in natural history museums and ethnographic exhibitions, which sometimes led to the restitution of objects ‘gathered’ during ethnological missions (Corsín Jiménez 2018; Heintz 2021). Ethnographic data have extended from fieldnotes and museum pieces to include e-mails, text messages and posts on social media (Murphy, Jerolmack, and Smith 2021). Even though the current digital age makes it easier to share data with the actors that co-produced it, an ethical dilemma arises: to what extent can such information be made public?

A solution is to maintain confidentiality through the anonymisation of interview transcripts or the release of carefully chosen data (Murphy, Jerolmack, and Smith 2021). Some anthropologists prefer to limit data sharing to the level of the community involved in the project (Heintz 2021). A number of collaborative digital archives have also been created by anthropologists as a way of responding to ethical demands (Corsín Jiménez 2018). Among them, ‘Digital Himalaya’ preserves ethnographic materials from the Himalayan region and makes them available to the descendants of the people from whom such resources were collected. In the same vein, ‘Mukurtu’ enables indigenous communities to share their cultural heritage using a set of ‘traditional knowledge labels’ that reflect their own protocols for circulating data.

In any case, sharing anthropological data implies a particular responsibility on the part of the researcher to agree on a data governance plan with the participants in the project, who co-produced the materials. If data is archived in an open repository, the selected platform should comply with the needs of the specific project, such as the possibility to renegotiate the status of the ethnographic resources.

Citizen anthropology – the challenge of participation

At the end of each summer, the monarch butterfly leaves eastern North America and flies south. Its final destination has long remained unknown, until the citizen science initiative ‘Monarch Watch’ began to track its journey. In 26 years, volunteers have tagged more than 1.5 million butterflies, documenting their flow of migration from Canada to Mexico.

Monarch Watch is just one example among the many citizen science programmes in the life sciences, ranging from fauna and flora observation to public health. Eighty per cent of citizen science initiatives are confined to the natural sciences, although interdisciplinary projects are increasingly borrowing from the social sciences as a way of addressing laypeople’s diverse voices and the richness of local knowledge (Tauginienė et al. 2020). ‘Rethinking home’ is one of the few citizen anthropology initiatives I came across while browsing the internet. Led by Jennifer Newell, the programme connected coastal communities affected by climate change in New York and Samoa through a series of workshops focusing on the residents’ relationship to their home. Conditions for cultural exchange were created between both groups: New Yorkers benefited from Samoans’ experience of helping each other as neighbours, while Samoans built on New Yorkers’ alternative construction methods (D’Costa 2014).

Citizen anthropology can innovatively complement ethnographic research, but why are there so few such initiatives? Even though citizen science is deeply rooted in the history of the natural sciences, with farmers and agricultural organisations collecting phenological data for centuries, the emergence of the social sciences was marked by elite-centred debates that left little room for public participation. At present, researchers in the social sciences may experience practical challenges in engaging in citizen science, related to the difficulty of mobilising groups engaged in the social (instead of natural) lay sciences, the management of data based on human observation (rather than collected through technical devices) and ethical imperatives (Heiss and Matthes 2017).

But maybe the question is rather: do anthropologists have to engage in citizen science? An alternative to citizen anthropology is participatory research, which has been developed as ‘an ethical approach to ethnography’ (The Intag project 2015). By actively working with a community, the participatory researcher gains intellectual insights but also delivers findings that empower local people. ‘To study anthropology is to study with people, not to make studies of them’, reminds Tim Ingold (2017). In other words, participatory research generally results from a negotiation between the ethnographer’s interests and those of the community (Vargas-Cetina 2020). Citizen anthropology looks promising, as long as it is associated with such attempts to make ethnographic research more participatory and empowering for local people.

Open access in anthropology – the challenge of diffusion

Take a 150-page book and a post on social media. Which of them will you most likely go through in full? Anthropologists are known for their taste for monographs, but busy readers may stick to the second option.

Speaking of academic publications, the format is particularly important as it determines the audience for the findings presented. Open science addresses the issue of dissemination from the perspective of access to research papers. The open painter’s palette ranges from black (documents accessible through illegal digital platforms) to diamond (publications available unconditionally through funding from academic institutions). Intermediary publishing shades include green (in a subscription-based journal with immediate or delayed open access), bronze (on a publisher page with immediate open access but no clear license) and gold (in an open-access journal with immediate open access) (OpenAIRE n.d.).

As varied as the nuances of open access are, they have their limits for anthropological knowledge production. At the time when anthropology gradually became ‘a global science’ (Heintz 2021), the beloved monograph was replaced by a squeezed and rigid format: the English research paper. Unfortunately, open access does not help decipher the corresponding esoteric language, which mainly speaks to a specialised public. Neither does it prevent some well-known academic publishing giants from pursuing their juicy business, nor does it give a chance to the readership to be a partner rather than a mere recipient (Dallemagne et al. 2015).

But there is still some room for creativity at the border between academia and the lay world. ‘Allegra Lab’, a collective of anthropologists and other academics, provides such a space for intellectual innovation on the margins of mainstream research publication. Besides book reviews and essays, the website experiments with a virtual museum of ‘weird stuff’ and fieldwork playlists. Allegra Lab’s co-founders Julie Billaud and Miia Halme-Tuomisaari believe that anthropology ‘is actually “sexy” and relevant to people outside the scholarly world’ (Golub 2014). Does this mean that we had better close the cap on the black, green, bronze, gold and diamond paint tubes? Let us rather use the colourful tools of open access and combine them with less conventional formats such as the blog post and the tweet, to attract readers within and beyond academia.

So where do we go from here? Beyond the discussion on the benefits and challenges of open science, there is a need to reflect on how we as anthropologists, social scientists and academics in general produce knowledge. Open data, citizen science and open access are powerful tools that we can creatively combine with collaborative data archiving, participatory modes of research and popular science practices. Maybe open science is no magic wand, but rather an invitation to revise our formulas for knowledge production within and with society.

Bibliography

Corsín Jiménez, Alberto. 2018. ‘A Data Governance Framework for Ethnography v. 1.0’. https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/172227.

Dallemagne, Grégory, Víctor del Arco, Ainhoa Montoya, and Marta Pérez. 2015. ‘The Value of Open Access in Anthropology and Beyond’. Anthropology in Action 22 (2). https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2015.220206.

D’Costa, Krystal. 2014. ‘“Rethinking Home” with Citizen Anthropologists’. Scientific American (blog). 15 July 2014. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/8220-rethinking-home-8221-with-citizen-anthropologists.

Golub, Alex. 2014. ‘An Interview with Allegra’. Savage Minds (blog). 9 January 2014. https://savageminds.org/2014/01/09/an-interview-with-allegra.

Heintz, Monica. 2021. ‘The Moral Economy of Anthropological Scholarship’. In Explorations in Economic Anthropology: Key Issues and Critical Reflections, edited by Deema Kaneff and Kirsten W. Endres, 145–56. New York: Berghahn Books.

Heiss, Raffael, and Jörg Matthes. 2017. ‘Citizen Science in the Social Sciences: A Call for More Evidence’. GAIA 26 (1): 22–26. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.26.1.7.

Ingold, Tim. 2017. ‘Anthropology Contra Ethnography’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1): 21–26. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.005.

Murphy, Alexandra K., Colin Jerolmack, and DeAnna Smith. 2021. ‘Ethnography, Data Transparency, and the Information Age’. Annual Review of Sociology 47 (1): 11.1-11.21. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-090320-124805.

OpenAIRE. n.d. ‘Open Access Mandate and Open Research Data in Horizon 2020: How Can OpenAIRE Help?’ Accessed 1 July 2021. https://www.openaire.eu/factsheets.

Tauginienė, Loreta, Eglė Butkevičienė, Katrin Vohland, Barbara Heinisch, Maria Daskolia, Monika Suškevičs, Manuel Portela, Bálint Balázs, and Baiba Prūse. 2020. ‘Citizen Science in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The Power of Interdisciplinarity’. Palgrave Communications 6 (1): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0471-y.

The Intag project. 2015. ‘Participatory Research: An Ethical Approach to Ethnography’. Cornell University (blog). 18 October 2015. https://blogs.cornell.edu/intageas392/2015/10/18/participatory-research-an-ethical-approach-to-ethnography.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2021. ‘Draft Recommendation on Open Science on Its Way to Final Adoption’. 14 May 2021. https://en.unesco.org/news/draft-recommendation-open-science-its-way-final-adoption.

Vargas-Cetina, Gabriela. 2020. ‘Do Locals Need Our Help? On Participatory Research in Anthropology’. Annals of Anthropological Practice 44 (2): 202–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12152.

Image by docentjoyce (CC BY 2.0)

UC3M Ticket to Open Science

My first experience with Open Science (OS) was through the research I did for my TFM where I analyzed the publication status of COVID-19 research data. It was a very enriching experience because I was able to learn about the different concepts that OS has today, the typology and identify how researchers are managing and publishing their data. In addition, the behavior of publishers and funding agencies as agents involved in this process.

I started the course with high expectations because of the topics and the speakers invited to the OS Cafés. After six weeks I can say that my expectations were satisfactorily exceeded because the contents have helped me to strengthen and increase the previous knowledge I had and learn new tools that will help me on my way as a researcher. The theoretical part was reinforced with the testimonies of the guests, who shared their experiences and real progress at different levels and areas where they are working towards the implementation and development of the OS.  In addition, I would like to emphasize the methodology in teaching the topics because they were dynamic and took into account the participation of the students.

During my early stage of research, I identified that researchers and institutions have different concepts about OS, but that they coincide in the action of sharing scientific knowledge product of a research. If we go further we can define that OS involves opening up the entire research process by documenting it and making it accessible for the benefit of the transparency of the research itself and of the article.

The main drawback from my point of view is the lack of knowledge on the subject among the agents that make up the OS which leads to the data not being FAIR, the publications are not on open access platforms even if they have been subsidized with public funds this contributes to the traditional evaluation system of science based on the impact factor and the number of citations.

As an open scientist I intend to create a digital identity in the main academic social networks to disseminate my research and in social networks that allow me to perform academic networking among researchers who develop similar lines of research with mine to promote the exchange of ideas and collaborative work. Likewise, to integrate into my research process the good practices of OS, that is, to elaborate a Data Management Plan (DMP) from the beginning of the research, to publish in a multidisciplinary repository that complies with the FAIR principles the research data that prove the transparency of my publications and to choose an open access journal to publish my articles.

Finally, I can say that the experience was enriching and I am enthusiastic about the idea of creating spaces like this course so that more researchers can learn about the benefits of becoming an Open Scientist.

Open Science concepts and challenges


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.

My reflections after UC3M ticket to 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 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.

Open Science: The way forward for scientific research

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.

 

 

 

My experience on the “Open Science” trip, as a lawyer

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.

My summary of ‘Open Science’ course

Open Science is a perfect example of how high we would build a tower if we all put blocks on top of each other, rather than building our own towers individually. The International Space station is a living and breathing example of what Open Science stands for. Sharing scientific knowledge to an extent and the resulting simultaneous progress has proven to be an effective tool towards a better future.
Open Science is an effort made by the research community to achieve a more focused, inclusive, and open to interpretation research. I got to know six building blocks of open science incorporating Open Access, Open Data, Open Reproducible Research, Open Science Evaluation, Open Science Policies, and Open Science Tools. The free flow of data, experimental guidance, and science tools has benefited the global community through free research publications. Open access motivates the new generation and helps imagine new possibilities. And open data has a proven potential of helping scientists further the research in times of pandemics and natural disasters. The Open Science Evaluation confirmed any finding and strengthened the core of such publications. The course also highlights that each of these blocks ensure the cooperation of the science community. The new Open Research Europe (ORE) is the high-quality, reliable and efficient publishing venue for any EU-funded research which would contribute to not just transparency and cost effectiveness, but also explore sustainable open access publishing business models.
Introduction to Open Access Tools such as OpenAIRE during the period of the course has led to wide accessibility of decentralized and interoperable metrics. With certain and obvious hurdles to Open Access might prove onerous and might lead to horribly labor-intensive research. To make OA come true with full effect, a certain group of scientists have formed a coalition named PLAN S, later named as COALITION S. The infrastructure set forth by COALITION S has been designed to help libraries and library consortia to complete the transition to Open Access. In this, any involving subscription journal is committed to transitioning to a fully Open Access Journal. As discussed during the course, the cons of such a system would be, certain undermining of humanities and social sciences, loss of publication freedom, and the ever increasing difference between opinion and evidence. On the other hand, the Pro’s set out by this system would increase excellence and creativity. It would also motivate international and interdisciplinary collaboration, and foster research in low-resourced environments.
During the session with Joy Davidson on the planning for FAIR data, discussions around the Data Management Plan explained the necessity of FAIR data. Open Data paves the path for non-restrictive access to all data, which may vary in reliability or reusability. Whereas, FAIR data relies on ten principal guidelines underlying under criterion such as FIndable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Concepts of both FAIR and Open data are not the same. The greatest potential reuse comes when data is both FAIR and Open. FAIR data requires a Data Management Plan. Under the Horizon Europe initiative, all projects that generate research data will have to establish and regularly update a Data Management Plan. Any DMP, in line with Fair should follow the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”, and should be united under European Open Science Cloud. EOSC, under Horizon 2020, was aimed to unify existing research data infrastructures in Europe and create links between Fair data and related services of science, making research data interoperable and machine actionable following the FAIR guidance principles. The EOSC under Horizon Europe, after succeeding Horizon 2020, is set to provide a single voice for advocacy by representing the broader European research community.
Generating a Data Management Plan (DMP) is a necessary task for all projects, as it is Horizon Europe’s mandatory requirement for all open funded research. DMP is the guiding infrastructure on how any data will be created or managed subsequently. It also provides instructions on what standards and methodologies are used. DMP should also state the plan of data sharing and strategy for long term preservation. Another crucial part of DMP is the superscription of ethics and intellectual properties. DMP is a useful tool in preventing data loss as well as producing FAIR data to get more impact. Proper mention of intellectual properties in DMP supports and motivates communal integration by crediting fairly among participants.
Such fair crediting and motivated individual licensing drives participation wider than just the mainstream scientific community. Citizen Science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists. In a broader sense, CS gathers not just active contribution to science, but also tools and resources through common people. For CS’s such wider contribution it is considered a pillar of the European Commission’s Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP).
While such outspread involvement and contribution set the seal on constant advancement of scientific knowledge, Open Science Policies make sure that Organizational mandates and subject policies are followed. Such mandates and policies are in place to corroborate safe transfer and usage of advanced findings. To regulate such policies there are systems in place, such as EU Export Control in European Union and Export Administration Regulation(EAR) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) in the United States. Such Administrations administer how the information is regulated or shared within or outside of the concerned areas. This is another useful tool to Open Science as it cumulatively decides to control any information harmful to society.
In conclusion, I think open Science is humanity’s best hope in advancement and communal prosperity. The course taken has concluded that it is imperative to combine various movements and practices aiming to make scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone. In this effort Open Science increases scientific collaboration and opens the process of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community.

Many thanks to Eva for conducting such an intriguing course!

Open scientist in the making

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.

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