Étiquette : open science

Catégories
EN

The Academic, Societal and Animal Welfare Benefits of Open Science for Animal Science

Authors : Christian Nawroth, E. Tobias Krause

Animal science researchers have the obligation to reduce, refine, and replace the usage of animals in research (3R principles). Adherence to these principles can be improved by transparently publishing research findings, data and protocols.

Open Science (OS) can help to increase the transparency of many parts of the research process, and its implementation should thus be considered by animal science researchers as a valuable opportunity that can contribute to the adherence to these 3R-principles.

With this article, we want to encourage animal science researchers to implement a diverse set of OS practices, such as Open Access publishing, preprinting, and the pre-registration of test protocols, in their workflows.

URL : The Academic, Societal and Animal Welfare Benefits of Open Science for Animal Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.810989

Catégories
EN

Biosecurity in an age of open science

Authors : James Andrew Smith, Jonas B. Sandbrink

The risk of accidental or deliberate misuse of biological research is increasing as biotechnology advances. As open science becomes widespread, we must consider its impact on those risks and develop solutions that ensure security while facilitating scientific progress.

Here, we examine the interaction between open science practices and biosecurity and biosafety to identify risks and opportunities for risk mitigation. Increasing the availability of computational tools, datasets, and protocols could increase risks from research with misuse potential.

For instance, in the context of viral engineering, open code, data, and materials may increase the risk of release of enhanced pathogens. For this dangerous subset of research, both open science and biosecurity goals may be achieved by using access-controlled repositories or application programming interfaces. While preprints accelerate dissemination of findings, their increased use could challenge strategies for risk mitigation at the publication stage.

This highlights the importance of oversight earlier in the research lifecycle. Preregistration of research, a practice promoted by the open science community, provides an opportunity for achieving biosecurity risk assessment at the conception of research.

Open science and biosecurity experts have an important role to play in enabling responsible research with maximal societal benefit.

URL : Biosecurity in an age of open science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001600

Catégories
EN

Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

Authors : Izuchukwu Azuka Okafor, Smart Ikechukwu Mbagwu, Terkuma Chia, Zuwati Hasim, Echezona Ejike Udokanma, Karthik Chandran

The advancement of scientific research and raising the next-generation scientists in Africa depend largely on science access. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused discussions around open science (OS) to reemerge globally, especially in resource-poor settings like Africa, where the practice of OS is low.

The authors highlighted the elements, benefits, and existing initiatives of OS in Africa. More importantly, the article critically appraised the challenges, opportunities, and future considerations of OS in Africa. Addressing challenges of funding and leadership at different levels of educational, research, and government parastatals may be pivotal in charting a new course for OS in Africa.

This review serves as an advocacy strategy and an informative guide to policymaking and institutionalization of OS in Africa.

URL : Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.855198

Catégories
EN

Towards wide-scale adoption of open science practices: The role of open science communities

Authors : Kristijan Armeni, Loek Brinkman, Rickard Carlsson, Anita Eerland, Rianne Fijten, Robin Fondberg, Vera E Heininga, Stephan Heunis, Wei Qi Koh, Maurits Masselink, Niall Moran, Andrew Ó Baoill, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Antonio Schettino, Hardy Schwamm, Zsuzsika Sjoerds, Marta Teperek, Olmo R van den Akker, Anna van’t Veer, Raul Zurita-Milla

Despite the increasing availability of Open Science (OS) infrastructure and the rise in policies to change behaviour, OS practices are not yet the norm. While pioneering researchers are developing OS practices, the majority sticks to status quo. To transition to common practice, we must engage a critical proportion of the academic community.

In this transition, OS Communities (OSCs) play a key role. OSCs are bottom-up learning groups of scholars that discuss OS within and across disciplines. They make OS knowledge more accessible and facilitate communication among scholars and policymakers.

Over the past two years, eleven OSCs were founded at several Dutch university cities. In other countries, similar OSCs are starting up. In this article, we discuss the pivotal role OSCs play in the large-scale transition to OS.

We emphasize that, despite the grassroot character of OSCs, support from universities is critical for OSCs to be viable, effective, and sustainable.

URL : Towards wide-scale adoption of open science practices: The role of open science communities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scab039

Catégories
EN

Toward More Inclusive Metrics and Open Science to Measure Research Assessment in Earth and Natural Sciences

Authors : Olivier Pourret, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Najmeh Shaghaei, Elenora M. van Rijsingen, Lonni Besançon

The conventional assessment of scientists relies on a set of metrics which are mostly based on the production of scientific articles and their citations. These metrics are primarily established at the journal level (e.g., the Journal Impact Factor), the article-level (e.g., times cited), and the author level (e.g., h-index; Figure 1).

These metrics form the basis of criteria that have been widely used to measure institutional reputation, as well as that of authors and research groups. By relying mostly on citations (Langfeldt et al., 2021), however, they are inherently flawed in that they provide only a limited picture of scholarly production. Indeed, citations only count document use within scholarly works and thus provide a very limited view of the use and impact of an article.

Those reveal only the superficial dimensions of a research’s impact on society. Even within academia, citations are limited since the link they express does not hold any value (Tennant et al., 2019). As an example, one could be cited for the robustness of the presented work while the other could be cited for its main limitation (Aksnes et al., 2019).

As such, two articles could be cited the same number of times for very different reasons, and relying on citations to evaluate scientific work therefore displays obvious limitations (Tahamtan et al., 2016). Beyond this issue, however, the conventional assessment of scientists is clearly beneficial to some scientists more than others and does not reflect or encourage the dissemination of knowledge back to the public that is ultimately paying scientists.

This is visible in the Earth and natural sciences which has been organized to solve local community problems in dealing with the Earth system like groundwater hazards (Irawan et al., 2021; Dwivedi et al., 2022).

URL: Toward More Inclusive Metrics and Open Science to Measure Research Assessment in Earth and Natural Sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.850333

Catégories
EN

Assessing Open Science Practices in Phytolith Research

Author : Emma Karoune

Open science is an integral part of all scientific research, but the extent of open science practices in phytolith research is unknown. Phytolith analysis examines silica bodies that are initially formed within and between plant cells during the life of the plant but become deposited in sediments once the plant dies.

The use of phytoliths in archaeobotanical and palaeoecological studies has been increasing in recent years resulting in an upsurge in publications. The aims of this article are to assess open science practices in phytolith research by reviewing data and metadata sharing, and open access, in a sample of journal articles containing primary phytolith data from 16 prominent archaeological and palaeoecological journals (341 articles).

This study builds on similar studies conducted for zooarchaeology (Kansa et al. 2020) and macro-botanical remains (Lodwick 2019). This study shows that 53% of papers shared data in any format but only 4% of papers contained reusable data, 74% included some pictures of phytolith morphotypes for identification purposes, 69% had a fully described method, 47% used the International code for phytolith nomenclature (ICPN 1.0) and only 13% of articles were open access.

Steps forward are then proposed, including planning for open projects, making more articles openly accessible and implementing the FAIR data principles, to use as a starting point for discussions in the wider phytolith and archaeological communities to develop guidelines for greater integration of open science practices.

URL : Assessing Open Science Practices in Phytolith Research

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/oq.88

Catégories
FR

La Science Ouverte à l’Université de Lorraine : bilan des actions entreprises et enjeux pour l’avenir

Auteurs.trices/Authors : Laetitia Bracco, Julien Brancher, Nicolas Fressengeas, Lylette Lacôte-Gabrysiak, Andreas Gutsfeld, Rudy Hahusseau, Thomas Jouneau, Celia Lentretien, Jean-François Lutz, Frédéric Villiéras

Le présent document se propose de retracer succinctement les actions entreprises par l’Université de Lorraine dans le cadre de sa politique Science Ouverte, elle-même dans les pas du premier Plan National pour la Science Ouverte de 2018 (PNSO1), puis d’esquisser les grands enjeux en la matière pour l’établissement, s’inspirant pour ce faire du deuxième Plan National pour le Science Ouverte, publié en 2021 (PNSO2), des initiatives de la Commission Européenne et de la récente recommandation de l’Unesco.

La première partie présentera donc le bilan des réalisations, en le structurant via les grands axes du PNSO1 ; tout comme la deuxième partie, qui s’efforcera d’anticiper les grands enjeux pour les années à venir, aidée en cela par le PNSO2 dont elle adopte la structuration.

URL : https://hal.univ-lorraine.fr/hal-03554958