Taking this “Open Science” course has allowed me to reorient the way I approach my research. Until now, I had carried out a “silent” search mode to look for information, bibliography or personalities that might be relevant to my research. I was planning to make the results of my research public once it is finished. However, I have understood that opening my research to the researchers community from the beginning can have great benefits for the entire process. There are many opportunities that open up when you use the tools that have been presented during the course, both to search for information and to share your own publications.
As a summary of the conclusions that I draw, excluding the use of specific tools, I would like to highlight some of the most important benefits of making an “Open Science” research:
– Find the weak points of the research that has been carried out. By sharing your progress, the community can help you to figure out the most relevant defects, and to improve the result.
– Enrich the investigation with different points of view, opinions and approaches. Sharing research, especially if it is in its early stages, can be very useful to enrich it with different contents. And above all, it can help us to focus our research towards points or ways that we had previously overlooked or of which we were not aware until we share our work.- Spread your idea and let it be publicized as your own. This allows the research community to know that you are dealing with a particular topic and that the shared theses about It are your elaboration. In other word it allows you to let others know that you are trying to be an “expert” in that particular topic.
– Know quickly who is investigating in your research areas. This allow us to exchange ideas with people who are researching in similar areas of yours. This could help to identify possible challenges and difficulties that you may find in the research process.
– Tools such as the European Open Science Cloud allow us to share and research more quickly and with greater impact, because, as Kostas Glinos, Head of Unit for “Open Science” in the Directorate General for Research & Innovation (DG RTD ) of the European Commission said, the investigations will also be evaluated by their efforts to include the research in an open environment. After all, much of our training and research is financed with public funds and this is a way of returning that investment to society.
– The tools offered by the Open Science environment allow to our texts and researches can always be attributed correctly. If we keep our ORCID profile correctly updated, we can ensure that our texts will be correctly attributed. Indeed, in a interconnected society we live today, being able to correctly attribute our publications is essential to be able to make a properly documented research.
– By the use of Open Access platforms to publish our research, we simplify the verification processes of the information obtained.
– The use of repositories, such those explained to us by Professor Tony Hernández -Europe PubMed Central, PecPec or Cogprints-, will help us to share easily our work and to index and preserve it in a correct way. In case we also choose to publish it as Open Access in magazines, it is important to check the publication conditions before its publication, because on many occasions they only have their own interests or seek just a clear economic interest.
– Publication in Open Access as part of the Open Science Environment can contribute to improvements in many different areas of society such as politics, health or education. In other words, the results of the investigations can be applied directly by different sectors. It also helps to create more diverse and inclusive research, which contributes to looking at society in a more global and less prejudicial way.
In essence, working in the Open Science environment is a challenge and raises the need to learn new tools and modify the proposed processes. However, Open Science research will ensure more transparent, enriching and undoubtedly much more interesting processes, and will help us to become more socially responsible researchers.
