My name is William A. Gracias, and I initially decided to attend this workshop (via web streaming, since I am away on research) simply because I needed the 1 ECTS as part of my transversal credits requirements, and because the course was made very accessible (free of charge, possibility to attend via streaming, etc.) by its organisers. But what started as mere superficial interest and a means to an end, has ended up becoming an important idea in my scientific disposition now. I am certainly a more sensitised person when it comes to Open Science (OS). I am now willing to explore the benefits of OS not just to me and my career, but to society at large.

To give a bit more context to my initial remarks, I would say that before this workshop my understanding of Open Access (OA) was mostly generic and mainly via the GNU and Openware movement associated with Linux. But OS, that’s a whole new world for me. While science has historically (when it was still a sub-school of philosophy) been an “open” subject, capitalism came in at the dawn of the industrial era and changed the way we thought and did science. Today, almost all science is paid for by the state or the private sector, and is vociferously protected. Even though most scientific know-how is for the betterment of the human race, we do acknowledge the fact that sometimes not all humans have the best interests of mankind. Hence the protection of science through intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes or plain secrecy (for example, in the case of chemical and sensitive nuclear technology). So while I believe it would be nearly impossible to go back to the pre-industrial era of science where it is open and accessible to «all», I still opine that a lot more “openess” in science is possible and healthy. That’s where I found resonance with some of the comments of a speaker at the workshop when he said “…. you don’t have to make all your work open”.

How do we go about achieving that? I don’t think mandating compulsory publication in OA journals or databases is the most prudent way to do that, without providing the right financial means to enable it. Unfortunately today, OA journals are some of the most costly journals to publish in, thus defeating the purpose of making them easily accessible since the underlying issue of capitalism remains unaddressed. By passing on the subscription costs to the authors (normally charged to readers), the first step to OA publishing has been made rather discouraging than inviting in a world where research on an average is not very highly paid and researchers are not always fully supported, running from pillar to post to seek funds. The underlying economics of OS first needs to be understood and addressed by like-minded countries to perhaps partly subsidise OA journals for their researchers who wish to publish in them, or to setup national OA repositories for various disciplines where all researchers of a nation can freely publish while maintaining international peer review norms. This can amount to unequal competition to private repositories and prestigious journals, which could eventually lead to a tapering in their costs. As long as this is done ethically and systematically, a resolution would be possible. Another aspect that needs to evolve in the debate of OS is the IPR laws and regimes. A speaker did mention during the workshop that the “progressive” IPR authorities support OS and OA, but I think this is an international issue and we cannot club some regimes as progressive just because they support OS/OA, making the rest of the IPR regimes regressive by counter-argument. All regimes need to move forward together if OS is to succeed, and I think the World Trade Organisation has a special forum of IPR authorities to discuss such issues. This needs to be allowed to evolve further, and to progress nations need to impress upon their own IPR authorities the importance of OS/OA.

But for this all to be worthwhile, the research community must wholeheartedly accept OS not just as a concept or a romantic idea, but more as a part of their work culture. To do this, I think many things have been initiated already in different institutes, universities, etc. But a lot more needs to be done. Many speakers spoke of the lack of awareness, and that is true. This workshop has been a starting point for novices like me, and more such workshops would definitely go a long way in introducing the theme to more researchers and opening up the debate to a wider pool of participants. For example, I didn’t know about re3data, OpenAIRE, github, etc. before. In my own field (plasma physics), using OS tools and OS journals is not a very important aspect for success since the motivations for publishing are usually impact factors, readership and circulation of those journals. But I am open to the idea of publishing in OA journals if provided the funds to do so. Another starting point (if not already done) towards OA publishing could be for the costly existing OS journals to tie up with major scientific conferences and national societies (society of physicists, society of mathematicians, etc.) and publish the proceedings of such conferences of annual reviews of societies in special OA issues of their journals for no charge to authors (or maybe a token fee that is affordable). This can be part of these enterprises’ social responsibility activities, or philanthropic efforts. This would go a long way in promoting their own journals and attract more readership and authors.

I think UC3M is doing well for itself by initiating actions necessary for future OA reforms, for example the Library’s efforts to stock large quanta of data. But much more can be done! The mere sensitisation of all professors and permanent staff members can bring about a radical change of attitude towards OS and in the usage of the OS utilities at their disposal within  UC3M. A culture of openness and exchange can cultivate far better quality of research. And I think this is where the university “fathers” – chancellors, deans, heads of department and research, etc. – need to agree on commonalities and points of consonance for the better of the university community. The pilot project, that was mentioned during the final panel discussion, on mapping the universitiy’s various nodal departments and persons in-charge is a first step in enabling the university to find points of consonance and setting up a protocal for interdepartmental communication between researchers. Although this was done with an eye on EU’s FP7 projects where the “consortium as a whole” can be viewed, this definitely will have a spin-off benefit for OS. I am sure there are other similar initiatives on-going that if tapped into can be useful to the OS efforts too.

So like I mentioned earlier, a near-complete acception of OA by the scientific community is an essential requisite to increase the attractiveness of OpenScience. And to do this the states and scientific authorities need to come up with ways to diminish the economic disparity that currently exists in publishing in OA journals. Further, a “societal impact factor”, as mentioned in the workshop, rather than the existing impact factor is definitely the more evolved of the two towards valuation of a journal. Adopting such a standard would need large changes from journals. While all this may be challenging, I think it is the right way forward to make the sciences more human, more simple and more accessible.

Thank you to the organiser/speakers for organising the workshop!

#IamAnOpenScientistBecause….. it improves the visibility of my research and makes it open to feedback and richer exchanges with other researchers.