When will ‘Open Science’ Become Simply ‘Science’? – Watson - 2015 - Article

Open science means doing scientific research in a transparent way, and making results available to everyone.

What is the problem?

Right now, open science is seen as optional, e.g. open access to articles is offered at an extra cost. Imagine the opposite (e.g. having to pay to make your work closed).

The ‘mobile phone paradox’- mobile phones are a world changing invention allowing people to connect from wherever they are. But sometimes it does not work because of signal issues. Should we not have invented mobile phones because they don’t work sometimes? No. The same is true for open science, it won’t always work but it’s the right thing to do.

There are six commonly accepted pillars of open science.

What is open data?

Releasing raw and processed data from our experiments, allowing others to analyze it unrestrictedly. The author thinks all raw data generated throughout your experiment should be released (especially discarded data), at least enough to completely regenerate the analysis you did (replicability. If the human genome project had only published the ‘interesting data’, many scientific discoveries would have been delayed.

Moral argument to disclose all data: data doesn’t belong to the scientists’; they belong to the funder (e.g. taxpayers). Datasets should be freely available to those who funded them.

What is open access?

A model where papers are available for anyone to read without paying, and that license allows secondary use like text-mining. It is immoral to expect those funding the research to pay to have access to the results.

What is open methodology?

A methodology that has been described in enough detail to allow researchers to repeat and apply the work elsewhere. A main reason we publish is so that others can learn from what we have done, showing how you carried out an experiment is essential to that.

What is open sourcing?

Refers to open and free access to the blueprint of a product. If you use software in your experiment, the source code should be available to read. It is part of the methods section and is the easiest part to share (online). Software should drive the open-science movement.

What is open peer-review?

It is about transforming the peer review process, making it collaborative between authors and reviewers through constructive criticism. Part of it is to remove anonymity. Evidence showed open review to do no damage to the quality of peer reviews.

What is open education?

Refers to the open and free availability of open resources. You can still charge for education, but resources used to educate should be made freely available.