Mapping the hinterland: Data issues in open science

Research for All

How is public engagement perceived to contribute to open science? This commentary highlights common reflections on this question from interviews with 12 public engagement fellows in Utrecht University’s Open Science Programme in the Netherlands. We identify four reasons why public engagement is an essential enabler of open science. Interaction between academics and society can: (1) better align science with the needs of society; (2) secure a relationship of trust between science and society; (3) increase the quality and impact of science; and (4) support the impact of open access and FAIR data practices (data which meet principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability). To be successful and sustainable, such public engagement requires support in skills training and a form of institutionalisation in a university-wide system, but, most of all, the fellows express the importance of a formal and informal recognition and rewards system. Our findings suggest that...

Trabalho, Educação e Saúde, 2018

Today, one of the main narratives in science is making access to research data universal, especially studies funded with public resources, a common motivation that underlies the open access to scientific information movement that began in the late 1990s. Without losing sight of the fact that the opening of research data in Brazil is part of a recent discussion, its implementation is necessary, not only because this has to do with offering open access to the outcomes of public funding, but also to meeting the commitment to do science under the inspiration of an open philosophy, supported by the infinite possibilities of information and communication technologies, which encourage collaborative, shared production among researchers, especially through the reuse of data. In December 2017, after the 8th Luso-Brazilian Open Access Conference, which was held at its premises in Rio de Janeiro, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) gave another unequivocal demonstration of its commitment to Open Science when it presented the Open science and open data: Mapping and analysis of policies, infrastructures, and strategies from a national and international perspective (Santos, Henning e Almeida, 2017) report on an analysis of international initiatives on policies, governance, and open data infrastructures as a result of the research carried out by the Working Group on Open Science, which has ties to the office of the vice president for Education, Information and Communication, in partnership with the Center for the Integration of Data and Knowledge in Health (Cidacs). The Cidacs, which is based in Fiocruz Bahia, is part of one of the institutional strategies to subsidize the formulation and implementation of a policy that guides the opening of scientific data. It conducts research, develops new investigative methodologies, and promotes professional and scientific training based on interdisciplinary projects grounded on the integration of large databases (big data) to expand the understanding of the population's health issues and to provide evidence to support decision-making in public policies. This study systematizes the experience of eight countries-Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom-and the initiatives promoted by the European Commission through its Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program to open data to society, aiming at the advancement of an open, collaborative, and shared science that guarantees the integrity of research and is coordinated with the social and economic sustainability of the nations. The Open science and open data: Mapping and analysis of policies, infrastructures, and strategies from a national and international perspective report is a part of the "

2019

Contextualizing Openness offers a fascinating look at Open Science and the democratization of knowledge in international development and social transformation with a focus on the Global South. This volume presents contri­butions from the 12 projects that form the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) organized around four central themes: Defining Open Sci­ence in Development, Governing Open Science, Negotiat­ing Open Science, and Expanding Open Science for Social Transformation. Chan, L., Okune, A., Hillyer, R., Albornoz, D., & Posada, A. (Eds.). (2019). <em>Contextualizing Openness: Situating Open Science</em>. University of Ottawa Press. https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/contextualizing-openness-situating-open-science

2022

What is public engagement, what is needed for successful public engagement and how can public engagement be perceived as part of open science? This commentary highlights reflections on these questions from 15 public engagement fellows in Utrecht University's Open Science Programme. With a goal of finding common ground intended as input for further discussion and policymaking within the university and beyond, these reflections are based on an analysis of twelve expert interviews conducted among and by the public engagement fellows. We identify three key conditions for meaningful public engagement in the context of open science: 1) room for diversity in (organizational) support and in rationales for the pathways towards meaningful societal impact; 2) a broad conceptualization of open science, offering a foundation for the structural integration of public engagement in academic work; and 3) the need for a continuous dialogue amongst academics, support staff, and management on publi...

The open science movement, although not new to social science broadly, has gained momentum recently within communication science. In response, journals in our field have begun encouraging open science practices, from data and materials sharing to submitting preregistered research reports. However, this momentum has also led to some confusion over what is and is not considered open science and what the value of open sciences practices is. In this editorial we lay out an “onion model” of open science that describes increasing levels of transparency and suggests how open science practices can be understood less as a revolutionary concept but more as a logical extension of some of the historical pillars of scientific norms. Through this model, we provide tangible steps for how scholars may begin thinking about how to introduce open science practices into their current and future empirical efforts.

2016

In a bid to improve research integrity, drive innovation, increase knowledge and to maximize public investment, researchers are increasingly under pressure to work in a more open and transparent way. This movement has been referred to as open science. Open science offers a range of potential and measurable benefits – for researchers and the institutions that employ them as well as for society more generally. However, to realise these benefits, we must work towards changing current research practices and behaviours. Researchers will need to acquire new research data management and curation skills that enable them to undertake a broader range of tasks along the entire research lifecycle – from undertaking new means of collaboration, to implementing data management and sharing strategies, to understanding how to amplify and monitor research outputs and to assess their value and impact. In parallel, information professionals who work to support researchers and the open science process w...

Quality & Quantity

The Open Science movement is gaining tremendous popularity and tries to initiate changes in science, for example the sharing and reuse of data. The new requirements that come with Open Science poses researchers with several challenges. While most of these challenges have already been addressed in several studies, little attention has been paid so far to the underlying Open Science practices (OSP). An exploratory study was conducted focusing on the OSP relating to sharing and using data. 13 researchers from the Weizenbaum Institute were interviewed. The Weizenbaum Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute in Germany that was founded in 2017. To reconstruct OSP a grounded theory methodology (Strauss in Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987) was used and classified OSP into open production, open distribution and open consumption (Smith in Openness as social praxis. First Monday, 2017). The research shows that apart from the d...

Journal of anthropological sciences = Rivista di antropologia : JASS / Istituto italiano di antropologia, 2014

2016

The potential benefits of Open Data and Open Science to economies in Africa and indeed elsewhere cannot be over stated. However, the reality in Africa is that the landscape in terms of sharing data needs a lot of negotiations at individual, institutional, and governmental level. This article takes a snapshot view of Botswana and outlines these contextual realities that could present a challenge to the Open Data Open Science agenda. Through document analysis, the authors trace the experiences of sharing data and arrives at the conclusion that data sharing hardly happens in Botswana. The paper than offers the benefits that could accrue from Open Data and Open Science and provides a procedural road-map for the country to embark on operationalising the Open Data Open Science agenda in Botswana.