Should biomedical research be like Airbnb?

Authors : Vivien R. Bonazzi, Philip E. Bourne

The thesis presented here is that biomedical research is based on the trusted exchange of services. That exchange would be conducted more efficiently if the trusted software platforms to exchange those services, if they exist, were more integrated.

While simpler and narrower in scope than the services governing biomedical research, comparison to existing internet-based platforms, like Airbnb, can be informative.

We illustrate how the analogy to internet-based platforms works and does not work and introduce The Commons, under active development at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and elsewhere, as an example of the move towards platforms for research.

URL : Should biomedical research be like Airbnb?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001818

How open science helps researchers succeed

Authors : Erin C McKiernan,  Philip E Bourne, C Titus Brown, Stuart Buck, Amye Kenall, Jennifer Lin, Damon McDougall, Brian A Nosek, Karthik Ram, Courtney K Soderberg, Jeffrey R Spies, Kaitlin Thaney, Andrew Updegrove, Kara H Woo, Tal Yarkoni

Open access, open data, open source and other open scholarship practices are growing in popularity and necessity. However, widespread adoption of these practices has not yet been achieved.One reason is that researchers are uncertain about how sharing their work will affect their careers.

We review literature demonstrating that open research is associated with increases in citations, media attention, potential collaborators, job opportunities and funding opportunities. These findings are evidence that open research practices bring significant benefits to researchers relative to more traditional closed practices.

URL : How open science helps researchers succeed

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16800