Open Science, Open Excellence
Open Science: a very broad topic that some fear while others love.
It took me 2 years of PhD program to understand why the research industry is flawed. I am not willing to perform a socioeconomic approach, but, as far as I understand, the monetization of knowledge even though has been useful in terms of copyright when generating value to companies/countries, I think that it must be redirected and somehow democratized if we, as a society, want to improve. In general, by game theory we can state that humans GROW if they SHARE, and in this case the sharing must be performed in terms of knowledge and resources.
My expectations of the course were very high. Before then, I barely knew about the concept. My humble approach was: “Open Science is the legal implementation of Sci-hub”. Nothing could be more untrue, Open Science is MUCH more, not only “the Robin Hood of knowledge”. In this course, I learnt about the specifications of Open Science and how the world is implementing all the official infrastructure, all the paths a researcher can take to become an Open Scientist. Open Science is a new paradigm (as the first session of the course was called), with new methods and different points of view when contributing with others. Quality vs. Quantity. The advertisement in social media in a competitive-productive way. In essence, meritocracy in strict sense.
One of my favorite sessions was the 5th one, Citizen Science and Public Engagement, because it woke up my childish spirit. When I was a child, I loved to experiment with machinery, watch animals, understand curious physical phenomena. I loved to try how different inputs resulted into different outputs, to understand the mechanism of things in simple day-to-day situations. This passion did not die but became a bit numb.
If citizen science become a thing, society will improve for sure, not only in terms of proficiency but also psychologically. Most kids do not like science because it is explained in third-person, it is boring and the reward is invested in the long-term future under the premise “you will get a good job and be financially independent”. On the other hand, most adults do not feel fulfilled because they could not pursue their dream, but, what if they could not pursue their dream because they did not know what the dream was about? Most people do not know what is their talent, what if one of the best potential-ornithologist is someone who liked birds but ended up working in something else because he/she could not learn about the migration of swallows? What if the private publishing was one of the reasons of not being able to develop a passion?
If citizen science is a project that can be materialized, I am sure the world will be happier, people will be able to study or do hobbies without restriction. And without restriction, endless contributions may appear.
In connection with that, I believe that citizen science performed a qualitative leap, specially during last year, since Covid pandemic struck. Then, a lot of Open Science was performed, I do not know if it was under this “specific” name, but at least it was conceptually performed. Knowledge was way more shared, researchers were taken more seriously, new free of charge research-kind applications were created, etc. And with reference to this last example, I would like to connect the ending of my blog with the question: How are your plans to become an “Open Scientists” during your PhD and beyond?
(Banner: I do not perform any kind of monetary-reward advertisement, I just think that the following application is an example of Open Science that must be shared and used in the research field)
A few months ago, a friend of mine asked me: “Hey! are you more an Obsidian or a Roam Research person?” For those who do not know them, they are applications that connect concepts, notes and knowledge, and gather them in a very useful way creating the so-called “Vault of Wisdom” (others call it “Second Brain”). The difference between them is that Obsidian is free-of-charge and it has the capability to publish the notes online. It was created during the lockdown (approximately) when a group of programmers wanted an Open Source knowledge manager app.
Then, my plans to become an Open Scientist begin with this application (Obsidian), in which I plan to publish everything I know, particularly everything involved in my PhD discoveries, including all the Open Science Café information that I obtained from this course.
However, even though this approach is extracurricular and non-oficial, academically I would like to participate in the Open Science world, for example, by publishing in the IEEE Access journal, which is an Open Access Journal of the IEEE society.
Also, I would like to incorporate in my day-to-day research life several applications like Github for uploading the code, Overleaf for writing purposes, as well as being more participative in several communities like Twitter or Stack Overflow, among others. In any case, I will save as a cheat sheet, one of my favorite slides of the course (from the first session):
Thanks to this summary of platforms, I will be able to integrate one application at a time so I will GROW by SHARING my knowledge at each stage of the research.
In the end, I think that the course was very useful, I liked the structure of each session and I would recommend it to anyone, even though those who are not researchers. Also, I would like to thank the speakers of the course and the Open Science Café sessions who where very helpful by providing their knowledge and resources, which have been very interesting.