Open Science is a general term that includes Open Publication, Open Data, Open software, open peer-review and citizen science. The adoption of the Open Science paradigm is set to fundamentally reshape scientific communications, the rewarding schemes, research funding and, thus, career development.
The European Union is planning to mandate Open Science, requiring Open Access to the scientific literature produced with EU support and Open data and Open Software to the material produced in research. More countries, as Norway, are expressing interest to follow or are already implementing Open Access policies. While there is a common acceptance that Open Science is desirable, clear implementation plans are still missing. What is certain, instead, is that a new communication strategy will influence the future of scientific discussion and, therefore, of science itself. The main actors, scientists in general, have been commonly considered as bland receivers, required to simply follow the instructions along new guidelines although they constitute the main actors that will be influenced by the new policies. The discrepancy between individuals and institutions is a risk to generate severe confusion and structural barriers to the scientific communications, further aggravating the already critical situation of scientific dissemination. Ironically, the difficulty of combining the researcher perspective with policy makers is communications.
Unfortunately, the common mutual interest in Open Science contradicts the attitude of researchers. Current studies indicate that, while most researchers agree on its importance, interests do not translate to practice. A reason is that the current publishing framework indirectly penalizes researchers opting for Open Access publications. Evidence for this is found in the low amount of high-tiered Open Access journals compared to that of non-Open Access journals. Researchers are key stakeholders in scientific publishing, whose actions are also determined by publication policies, while scientific communications and publishing attitudes are determined by policies at the institutional and international level.
Previous projects:
- Eurodoc 2017 – Open Science (https://stipendiat.no/2017/02/eurodoc-2017-open-science/)
2) Cooperation seminar on Open Access (https://stipendiat.no/2016/09/cooperation-seminar-on-open-access/)