Report Proposes Recommendations and New Framework to Speed Progress Toward Open Science

`While significant progress has been made in providing open access to scientific research, a range of challenges — including the economics of scientific publication and cultural barriers in the research enterprise — must be overcome to further advance the openness of science, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report recommends coordinated action from the academic community and other research stakeholders, and the use of an `open science by design` framework to foster openness throughout the research process.

Open science aims to ensure the free availability of scholarly publications, the data that result from research, and the methodologies, including code or algorithms, that were used to generate those data. The National Academies were asked to provide guidance to the research community as it builds strategies for achieving open science.

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Barriers remain, however. Despite significant progress, today’s science is not completely open. Sharing data, code, and other research products is becoming more common, but it is still not routinely done across all disciplines. And most scientific articles are only available on a subscription basis.

One significant challenge is an academic culture and incentive system that does not adequately reward open science practices and may even discourage them, the report says.

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Another challenge is that open publication — making research articles available at no charge — conflicts with the subscription-based mode of scientific journal distribution used by both for-profit and nonprofit traditional publishers, the report says.

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The report’s recommended `open science by design” framework envisions principles and practices and that should occur at each stage of the research process. For example, at the beginning or “provocation” phase of the research process, researchers have immediate access to the most recent publications and research results, free of charge; they use the latest database and text mining tools to explore these sources, identify concepts embedded in the research, and identify where novel contributions can be made; and they have robust collaborative tools to network with colleagues. Principles and practices are also outlined for subsequent phases of research — ideation, knowledge generation, validation, dissemination, and preservation.

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Open Science by Design

Realizing a Vision for 21st Century Research (2018)

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press

`Description

Openness and sharing of information are fundamental to the progress of science and to the effective functioning of the research enterprise. The advent of scientific journals in the 17th century helped power the Scientific Revolution by allowing researchers to communicate across time and space, using the technologies of that era to generate reliable knowledge more quickly and efficiently. Harnessing today’s stunning, ongoing advances in information technologies, the global research enterprise and its stakeholders are moving toward a new open science ecosystem. Open science aims to ensure the free availability and usability of scholarly publications, the data that result from scholarly research, and the methodologies, including code or algorithms, that were used to generate those data.`