What is Open Science?

First of all, I first heard about Open Science (OS) at the workshop and before then, I had never heard about it. It suffices to say that the Open Science forum needs to do more in making sure that all Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are on-board with Open Science, motivation, benefits and best practices. To this end, I think higher education institutions e.g. Universities and research centers should have Open Science guiding principles shared with each PhD student & researchers. And of course, more workshops like this one could really help spread the word.

So, my current understanding of Open Science if I could paraphrase from Dr. Rebecca Lawrence’s presentation is; increase research quality, boost collaboration, speed up the research process, transparent research assessment, “citizen science”, and inspire more people into research. When I read through all these objectives of OS, I am intrigued and inspired though at the same time I have this gut feeling that all these objectives are more ideal than realistic in my simple opinion. Here is why; To create really quality research and have collaboration with other disciplines, you need time and yet most funders want the research outputs as soon as possible. And without the funders’ money, the researchers can’t survive in the first place. So, in short something has to give which in most cases is the research quality/outputs. The researchers and the funders find a common ground in terms of research outputs. In terms of transparent research assessment, in my opinion I think by virtue of us being human we are already biased and have our limited identifications in terms of higher institutions and research centers we prefer. Though, there is hope for this objective because in the near future machines will be doing the research assessment on our behalf. These are not only problems of OS but the research community as a whole. When it comes to inspiring more people to join research, I think that’s up to the incentives accorded to researchers. In summary, I think OS is a great initiative though I think it needs to move from being an idea to the actual granular details on how each of these objectives can actually be achieved.

 What did you learn in the workshop?

I really had a great time listening to all the presenters at the workshop. It was really eye-opening for me and I know for sure this is the future of research. The workshop actually got me thinking about the current research infrastructure and how insane it is!!!. This is the current scenario; we as researchers struggle to have our work published in these journals for a fee, review for free and later our own universities and research centers are charged a fee for us to have access to our own research. This is crazy to say the least. So, there is a need for OS however as a PhD student I am going to be evaluated based on the journals’ impact factors where I published my work. Which brings me to my first question, where is the motivation for me as a PhD student to make my research OS? Because there is a higher chance of my work reaching a wider audience if I publish in a high impact journal than an OS platform which currently maybe accessed by a few people. My second question, in case I was really interested in publishing my work based on OS principles, where is the platform that I can use to publish my work and what is its impact factor? Of course, in the workshop there was the argument that impact factor is inversely proportional to applicability however the PhD committee that is going to evaluate my research findings isn’t interested in that fact but rather the journal impact factor. Lastly, what are the recommended OS practices and where are they published for reference? I could probably google this but am still looking for a motivation that is in line with my academic progress evaluation as a PhD student.

What do you think About sharing data and publications from publicly funded Research?

In terms of sharing data and publications from publicly funded research, am all for it. As Prof. Dr. Barend Mons said “We get paid for our hobbies and it’s our responsibility to be accountable to the public”. I know for certain that this is true for me, I love doing research and the fact that am getting paid for it is an added bonus.  So, whatever I need to do to give back to the public, am OK with doing that. However, the process of making my research public shouldn’t necessitate more work on my end than is absolutely necessary, so minimal requirements and highest interoperability and am pretty sure all researchers will be up for it.

How would you like to be EVALUATED in your academic career and / or your contribution Research?

I believe my research work should be evaluated based on transparency and fairness. Also, I notice there is the current trend where research is evaluated mainly on the “big” outputs rather than the small milestones i.e. we are more interested in the consequences rather than the process which I think is one of the limitations to current research. Because we know we need to have outputs in the shortest time possible, we can’t focus on taking on really challenging tasks that would have a much higher impact in the future. In short, we need to give researchers time without them having to worry about their funding. You see, some might argue that having research goals at the end of every 6 months to a year keeps researchers accountable to their funders though at the same time it limits their thinking.

Who do you think is the responsible / s to change the system?

I do think everyone is responsible for changing the current system. However, for people to be responsible they need to have the information and be able to process it. And I think up to this point, this information hasn’t been circulated fairly well to the lower layers i.e. researchers who are the people expected to publish their research in accordance to OS principles. As Silvia said in the workshop and of course am paraphrasing, “We all need to take little actions every day that bring us closer to our goal of OS-based kind of research”. The more we wait for all the multi-stakeholders and institutions to come onboard, the more time is wasted. And as the saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. That said, the only way in my opinion that researchers are going to fully embrace OS is if it’s in line with their reward systems and career progression. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to make great strides in this arena without a change in ways that research is evaluated and incentived.

 Have you ever thought About using citizen science in your research?

To be fair, I also had never heard about citizen science though I have seen it in action several times. I just wasn’t familiar with the terminology. I most definitely would use citizen science in my research because we now know that all research disciplines are related, and the most impactful research involves outputs from several disciplines. For me a win in my research would be when the public are used as active research participants from the beginning to the end. We should all work together and to really progress, we need to give the public access to our research and let them critique it.

What Could you do for Open Science?

My commitment to Open Science is first of all to get to know more about it and then try to find ways to use it in my research. I strongly believe that this is the ultimate future of research. I mean we could try to delay it like what’s happening now, but the evolution is coming and those who aren’t ready to change will definitely be thrown off the bus. We owe it ourselves to change and ACT NOW. At the end, change is the only thing we can really count on. So am all for Open Science despite my few reservations.

#IamAnOpenScientistBecauseIBelieveThisIsTheUltimateFutureOfReserach