One step forward: the right to Open Science

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.