Identifying the challenges in implementing open science

Authors : Sarah E. Ali-Khan, Antoine Jean, E. Richard Gold

Areas of open science (OS) policy and practice are already relatively well-advanced in several countries and sectors through the initiatives of some governments, funders, philanthropy, researchers and the community. Nevertheless, the current research and innovation system, including in the focus of this report, the life sciences, remains weighted against OS.

In October 2017, thought-leaders from across the world gathered at an Open Science Leadership Forum in the Washington DC office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to share their views on what successful OS looks like.

We focused on OS partnerships as this is an emerging model that aims to accelerate science and innovation. These outcomes are captured in a first meeting report: Defining Success in Open Science.

On several occasions, these conversations turned to the challenges that must be addressed and new policies required to effectively and sustainably advance OS practice.

Thereupon, in this report, we describe the concerns raised and what is needed to address them supplemented by our review of the literature, and suggest the stakeholder groups that may be best placed to begin to take action.

It emerges that to be successful, OS will require the active engagement of all stakeholders: while the research community must develop research questions, identify partners and networks, policy communities need to create an environment that is supportive of experimentation by removing barriers.

This report aims to contribute to ongoing discussions about OS and its implementation. It is also part of a step-wise process to develop and mobilize a toolkit of quantitative and qualitative indicators to assist global stakeholders in implementing high value OS collaborations.

Currently in co-development through an open and international process, this set of measures will allow the generation of needed evidence on the influence of OS partnerships on research, innovation, and critical social and economic goals.

URL : Identifying the challenges in implementing open science

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/mniopenres.12805.1

Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy

Edited by Susanne Hecker, Muki Haklay, Anne Bowser, Zen Makuch, Johannes Vogel and Aletta Bonn

Citizen science, the active participation of the public in scientific research projects, is a rapidly expanding field in open science and open innovation. It provides an integrated model of public knowledge production and engagement with science.

As a growing worldwide phenomenon, it is invigorated by evolving new technologies that connect people easily and effectively with the scientific community.

Catalysed by citizens’ wishes to be actively involved in scientific processes, as a result of recent societal trends, it also offers contributions to the rise in tertiary education. In addition, citizen science provides a valuable tool for citizens to play a more active role in sustainable development.

Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy identifies and explains the role of citizen science within innovation in science and society, and as a vibrant and productive science-policy interface.

The scope of this volume is global, geared towards identifying solutions and lessons to be applied across science, practice and policy.

The chapters consider the role of citizen science in the context of the wider agenda of open science and open innovation, and discusses progress towards responsible research and innovation, two of the most critical aspects of science today.

URL : Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy

Alternative location : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/citizen-science

Open Science and Public Sector Information – Reconsidering the exemption for educational and research establishments under the Directive on re-use of public sector information

Author : Heiko Richter

The article discusses the possibilities of including public research and educational establishments within the scope of the Directive regulating the re-use of public sector information (2003/98/EC – ‘PSI Directive’).

It subsequently evaluates the legal consequences of such an inclusion. Focusing on scientific information, the analysis connects the long-standing debates about open access and open educa-tion to open government data.

Their common driving force is the call for a wide-spread dissemination of publicly funded information. However, the regulatory standard set out by the PSI Directive is characterized by considerable legal uncer-tainty.

Therefore, it is difficult to derive robust assumptions that can form the ba-sis for predicting the effects of extending the PSI Directive’s scope to research in-formation. A potential revision of the PSI Directive should reduce this uncertain-ty.

Moreover, PSI regulation must account for the specific incentives linked to the creation and dissemination of research results.

This seems of primary importance for public-private research collaborations because there is a potential risk that a full application of the PSI Directive might unduly affect incentives for such col-laborations.

URL : http://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-1-2018/4679

Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement

Authors : Birgit Schmidt, Andrea Bertino, Daniel Beucke, Helene Brinken, Najko Jahn, Lisa Matthias, Julika Mimkes , Katharina Müller, Astrid Orth, Margo Bargheer

Together with many other universities worldwide, the University of Göttingen has aimed to unlock the full potential of networked digital scientific communication by strengthening open access as early as the late 1990s.

Open science policies at the institutional level consequently followed and have been with us for over a decade. However, for several reasons, their adoption often is still far from complete when it comes to the practices of researchers or research groups.

To improve this situation at our university, there is dedicated support at the infrastructural level: the university library collaborates with several campus units in developing and running services, activities and projects in support of open access and open science.

This article outlines our main activity areas and aligns them with the overall rationale to reach higher uptake and acceptance of open science practice at the university. The mentioned examples of our activities highlight how we seek to advance open science along the needs and perspectives of diverse audiences and by running it as a multi-stakeholder endeavor.

Therefore, our activities involve library colleagues with diverse backgrounds, faculty and early career researchers, research managers, as well as project and infrastructure staff. We conclude with a summary of achievements and challenges to be faced.

URL : Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6020027

Framing Power: Tracing Key Discourses in Open Science Policies

Authors : Denisse Albornoz, Maggie Huang, Issra Martin, Maria Mateus, Aicha Touré, Leslie Chan

Given that “Open Science” is becoming a popular policy object around the world, this study sought to identify key narratives about Open Science in policy, and critically examine the extent to which they are sustaining or strengthening multi-layered domination and inequality schemes that pre-exist in scientific knowledge production.

To do so, we conducted a content analysis of Open Science policies stemming from Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa to understand which narratives about Open Science policies are produced, reproduced and by whom; and in turn, whose interests may be neglected in this process.

We found that Open Science policies, mostly stemming from Europe, frame “openness” as a vehicle to promote technological change as part of an inevitable and necessary cultural shift to modernity in scientific production.

The global reach of these narratives, and the technologies, standards and models these narratives sustain, are dictating modes of working and collaborating among those who can access them, and creating new categories of exclusion that invalidate knowledge that cannot meet this criteria, putting historically marginalized researchers and publics at further disadvantage.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816725

Towards open science in Argentina: From experiences to public policies

Authors : Valeria Arza, Mariano Fressoli, Sol Sebastian

The emergence and wide diffusion of information and communication technologies created ever increasing opportunities for sharing and collaboration, which shortened geographic, disciplinary and expertise distances.

There exist various technologies, tools and infrastructure that facilitate collaborative production processes in various social spheres, and scientific production is not an exception.

Open science produces scientific knowledge in a collaborative way, including experts and non-experts and to share the outcomes of knowledge creation processes. We identify 68 open science initiatives in Argentina using different primary and secondary sources.

This paper describes those experiences in terms of goals, disciplines and openness along research stages. Building on the relationship between characteristics of openness and expected benefits, we discuss policy implications in order to better support openness and collaboration in science.

URL : http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7876

Making Open Science a reality

Science is the mother of the digital age. And yet, twenty-two years after CERN placed the World Wide Web software in the public domain, effectively creating the open internet, science itself has struggled not only to “go digital” but also to “go open”. This report, Making open science a reality reviews the progress in OECD countries in making the results of publicly funded research, namely scientific publications and research data openly accessible to researchers and innovators alike.

The report i) reviews the policy rationale behind open science and open data; ii) discusses and presents evidence on the impacts of policies to promote open science and open data; iii) explores the legal barriers and solutions to greater access to research data; iv) provides a description of the key actors involved in open science and their roles; and finally v) assesses progress in OECD and selected non-member countries based a survey of recent policy trends.

URL : http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/making-open-science-a-reality_5jrs2f963zs1-en