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Open Science: A Tool for Expanding Scientific Scholarly Knowledge
Hasbi Alikunju*
Research Scholar
Department of Library and Information Science
Central University of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur
Abstract
Science is one of the fast developing and innovating field in the world.
Awareness of Science information and knowledge is very essential and
useful for everyone who belong to whichever discipline. Making scientific
publications and other scholarly records available open for public, it will
enhance the global scientific efficiency of the society. Library and
information centres can play relevant role in imparting the science
knowledge to academic and non-academic community. Though Open
science is a very old idea, but it remains as an under developed area in
country like India. The article is trying to explore more about open science
and its major components and researcher reviews the related articles of
open science.In this article, the researcher has tried to provide a
comprehensive and concise introduction to open science and its
components and highlight resources that can help students and
researchers with no background knowledge. Also the study analyses the
open science initiatives established by India Government recently with
collaboration of Centre for Open Science. The Open Science initiative is
important to ensure access to research; data and metrics are easily and
freely available.
Keywords: Open Science, Scientific Publications, Library
INTRODUCTION
Researches are undergoing the era in various fields of the world. Fast moving researches are
progressing in the very special field of science and its allied disciplines are the reality.
Importance of science is rising in everyday life of a person, especially in this internet
generation. Hence, it is essential that science should make available in an open and free
fashion for those who need and utilize it. This is the juncture where the open science
movement appears as crucial.
Open science is a part of open access and it is a new approach to the scientific process. It is
the action to make the primary outputs of publicly funded research results – publications and
the research data – publicly accessible in digital format with no or minimal restriction
according to OECD.
Open science enhances associations and sharing of resources among researchers. Opening up
the research process and the outcomes can potentially have many benefits. Metadata related
activities are more common due to open science. It has increased the importance and
applicability of science to our environment and world issues like privacy and the rightful
author of scientific data are still some of the challenges facing open science. Academic
CUTN
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libraries continue to take steps to be involved as key players in the proliferation of open
science through advocacy, building of institutional data repositories and serving as hearts for
scientific collaboration among others. Academic libraries have to do more in the area of
advocacy and arrangement of data repositories. According to Fecher and Friesike (2014)
review literature on open science research, Open Science initiative has five Schools of
Thought 1. Public school refers to making the research process accessible and the results
comprehensible 2. Democratic school deals with Open access to scientific publications and
data 3. Pragmatic school narrates the Collaboration and sharing of information 4.
Infrastructure school defined as Accessibility to software, applications and computing
networks 5. Measurement school refers to Updating traditional metrics to better fit the
modern digital age. The component parts of open science are:
Open Access to publications
Open source code
Pre-prints in Green Open Access repositories
Open Peer review
Alternative Reputation Systems, based on new/alternative metrics
Science Blogs
Open Annotation
Open Data
Open Lab Books/Workflows
Citizen Science
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Paul Ayris and Tiberius Ignat (2017) conducted a study on “Defining the role of libraries in
the Open Science landscape: a reflection on current European practice”. This collaborative
paper looks at how libraries can engage with and offer leadership in the Open Science
movement and It is based on case studies. It starts by analyzing three recent trends in Science,
and then links component parts of the research process to aspects of Open Science. The paper
then reviews in detail at four areas and identifies roles for libraries: Open Access and Open
Access publishing, Research Data Management, E-Infrastructures and Citizen Science. The
paper concludes in saying a model for how libraries, by using a 4-step test, can assess their
engagement with Open Science. Benedikt Fecher and Sascha Friesike (2013) conducted a
study on “Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought” based on literature review.
This study aims at structuring the overall discourse by proposing five Open Science schools
of thought: The infrastructure school, the public school, the measurement school, the
democratic school and the pragmatic school.
John I. Ogungbeni, Amaka R. Obiamalu and others (2016) conducted a study on “The roles
of academic libraries in propagating open science: a qualitative literature review”. This study
researches the roles of academic libraries in propagating Open Science and it is a qualitative
survey based on literature review. According to this study “…Open science has increased the
relevance of science to our environment and world issues like privacy and the rightful author
of scientific data are still some of the challenges facing open science…” Danielle Padula
(2019) conducted a study on “The Evolving Role of Preprints in the Open Access Publishing
Landscape: Key Trends and Initiatives”. This study narrates about Integrating Preprints into
the Traditional Publishing Process via Green Open Access and Developing the Next
Generation of Preprints and Institutional Repositories. Emily Ford (2013) conducted a study
on the topic “Defining and Characterizing Open Peer Review: A Review of the Literature”.
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The researcher trying to study the articles regarding open peer review, its common definitions
and its different characteristics. The researcher examined thirty-five articles published
through multidisciplinary databases such as Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Academic
Search Complete, with in the last ten years whose central theme was peer review of scholarly
articles. And also the study discusses benefits and challenges of open peer review and it
concludes open peer review is necessary, it should exist scholarly publishing community to
enhance the quality of the researches works.
Emily Ford (2015) conducted a study on the topic “Open peer review at four STEM journals:
an observational overview”. In which, researcher conducted an observational overview of
four STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) journals such as PLOS
One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Researchand analyses the eight
characteristics of open peer review among these journals. The study concludes that open peer
review implementations of the four stem journals are different, only few of the open peer
review journals implement truly transparent peer review.
OPEN ACCESS TO PUBLICATIONS
Open access (OA) is defined as free, unrestricted online access to research publications such
as journal articles and books and also open access content is open to all, with no access fees.
Gold OA, green OA and hybrid OA are the major types of open access. Gold open access is
defined as journals in which all articles and content are open access which is available to
anyone on the internet without any subscription fees or sign-in. Green open access means
when the publisher of a subscription journal allows the author to keep the non-commercial
rights to his/her article so it can be posted in open internet archives. Hybrid open access
defined that one or more articles in a subscription journal may be open to anyone on the
internet even though all the remaining content is available only to people and institutions with
paid subscriptions. Academic libraries have subscriptions to a large number of scholarly
journals, and many allow members of the local community to access the library's journals if
they visit the library in person. Students, Scholars, and the general public benefit from open
access.
OPEN SOURCE CODE
Source code is the part of software and Open source software is software with source code
that anyone can scrutinize, modify, and facilitate. In the case of Open source software, its
authors make its source code available to others who would like to view that code, copy it,
learn from it, alter it, or share it. Through it, Open source code provides a provision for
students who can share their work with others, inviting comment and critique, as they
develop their skills. Examples of open source software are Libre Office and the GNU Image
Manipulation Program. So, open source code plays an integral role in imparting open science
to scientific community and also common people.
PRE-PRINTS IN GREEN OPEN ACCESS REPOSITORIES
Definition of a preprint is that a full draft of a research paper that is shared publicly before it
has been peer reviewed. Preprints are a small but expeditiously developing piece of scholarly
communication. Preprint usage has been on the rise in recent years and many of the scholars
are turning to preprint repositories, online databases traditionally developed for posting
copies of manuscripts prior to formal publication. ArXiv and BioRxiv are the examples of
pre-prints of science discipline. The increase in preprint usage has created new opportunities
to disseminate and link scientific OA research outputs. Green OA has emerged as a common
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practice that is widely promoted by funders and publishers. Many of them facilitate either
pre- or post-publication versions of scientific articles to be submitted to preprint servers to
make the research freely or openly accessible, and journal publishers have started
encouraging scholars to post versions of their papers to preprint servers to impart scholarly
knowledge.
OPEN PEER REVIEW
The function of the scientific peer-reviewed system is to enhance greater confidence that
published research is scientifically sound. Open peer review has no widely accepted or
established definition existed. This system is widely accepted as the best available, although
imperfect, to guide the global scientific community towards progress. Peer-reviewed
publishing is also used by research scientists, institutions and funders as a mechanism to
claim ownership of their discoveries. As a result, the community generally concludes that
findings should be kept secret until they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. Open peer
reviews are of various characteristics based on their openness of the review process and
review timing. Open peer review based on openness of review process are signed review,
disclosed review, editor-mediated review, transparent review, and crowd sourced review and
based on the review timing are pre-publication review, synchronous review, and post-
publication review. There are some potential drawbacks with open peer review, as some
reviewers may feel reluctant to give honest negative reviews of known senior researchers’
work, thus leading to self-censorship to avoid clashes.
ALTERNATIVE REPUTATION SYSTEMS, BASED ON NEW / ALTERNATIVE
METRICS
According to Wikipedia, in scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics is defined as non-
traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation
impact metrics, such as impact factor and h-index. The idea with altmetrics is closely related
to the Open Science movement and it is partly because of altmetrics are mostly derived from
openly available scientific articles and to some degree other research products. One of the
ideas with altmetrics, and open science, is that open peer review could replace the current
standard of double-blinded peer review. With an open review process reviewers will get
credit for this, otherwise hidden part of their work, while the transparency of the process
could lead to increased transparency.
SCIENCE BLOGS
According to Inna Kouper, blogs can be generally defined as frequently updated web pages
that facilitate informal communication between the author and its audience. Science blogs is
a part of open science which is simply defined as blogs related to science and its sub-
disciplines. Science blogs is a new model of science journalism and it is a powerful
mechanism that can be used by academic institutions to disseminate scientific knowledge and
facilitate conversation about science. Personnel connected to science blogs are mainly
scientists, science journalists, researchers, teachers, students and sometimes-common people.
As it is an application of web 2.0, blog users can communicate with bloggers and also
comment and criticize the blogs. Science blogs paves the way for the dissemination of
science news, science innovations & developments, scholarly communication. It encourages
maintaining the online relationship between science bloggers and science journalists. Some
examples of world famous science blogs are IFL Science, CSIRO, Nautilus, PLOS,
Improbable Research, Laelaps, Annals of Botany Blogs, etc.
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OPEN ANNOTATION
Annotation is a prevalent component of scientific scholarly practice for both the humanist
and the scientist. Scholars organize existing knowledge and enhance the creation and sharing
of new knowledge by a method. Individual scholars when reading as a tool to memory, to add
commentary, and to classify, use it. It can promote shared editing, scholarly collaboration,
and pedagogy. Authors of the articles approve the annotations and editors of the magazine
curate the annotations. This amazing collaborative attempt to advance scientific
understanding is built on top of open annotation infrastructure. Participative web annotation
has the potential to transform how science is taught and practice. Students can both become
more literate about scientific subjects and knowledge production as well as contribute
valuably to the scientific record themselves.
OPEN DATA
Plenty of scientific data are available in online, which may be open or not. Open Data (OD) is
an developing term in the process of defining how scientific data may be published and re-
used without price or any other restrictions. Scientists generally consider published data as
belonging to the scientific community, but many publishers ask copyright over data and will
not allow its re-use without permission. This is a major barrier to the progress of scholarship
in the digital age. Being open data is the part of open science, both people who in touch with
science and not can easily consume the valuable scientific data for the betterment their
various fields of life. Scientific data are available in PubMed, Scopus, MEDLINE, Google
Scholar and Clarivate’s Web of Science and also listed by the Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ). Making data open through these, it can be bring revolutionary
transformation in science field.
OPEN LAB BOOKS / WORKFLOWS
Open notebook science can be described as part of a wider open science movement that
includes the advocacy and adoption of open access publication and open data. The OLB is a
compilation of open, freely-available lab protocols collected, with permission, from across
the internet. A growing team of scientists around the world are now sharing their lab
notebooks online. Open-notebook science referred to practice of making the entire primary
record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. The concept "open-
notebook science" was coined in 2006 in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an Associate
Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University at the time. An open laboratory notebook
prepares it acceptable to cite the exact instances of experiments used to support arguments in
articles and it implies that the research is being reported on an ongoing basis without
unreasonable delay or filter. Open lab book provides the data accessible within weeks instead
of keeping it hidden for years, so it can avoid spending time and resources on redundant
experiment. It should include detailed protocols that can be reproduced, which is often not the
case in peer-reviewed publication. It also includes negative data, which are almost never
disclosed in the current publishing system, can sometime provide important insight. Addition
to these, it offer a space for anyone to comment on experimental records. Junior scientists can
use their open notebooks to connect with their peers and experts in the field, start new
collaborations and build their own network. The use of open lab notebooks provides
opportunity to present work clearly and concisely to both experts and non-experts. But there
is chances of data theft, data deluge and some patent issues is the negative perspective of
open lab books.
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CITIZEN SCIENCE
Citizen science is a segment of Open Science and is described as public participation in
scientific research. It is also known as community science, civic science, crowd science,
crowd sourced science, online citizen science or volunteer monitoring. Rick Bonney in the
US and Alan Irwin in the UK were defined the term “citizen science” in the middle of 1990s.
Citizen science movement intends that science should responsive to citizen’s needs &
concerns and also citizens themselves could produce reliable scientific knowledge. Another
definition of citizen science is that the participation of non-scientists in the process of
gathering data according to specific scientific protocols & in the process of using and
interpreting that data. Citizen science movement actively participate citizens in scientific
venture that generates new knowledge or understanding. Citizens may act as project leader,
collaborators, contributors or any relevant role in the movement.
OPEN SCIENCE INITIATIVES IN INDIA
As I said earlier, position of India in the implementation of open science movement is
comparatively backward, that means science in India is undergoing through a severe crisis.
But making Indian science more open and accessible, the Government took an initiative to
home scientific research outputs. As a part of this, last year, 15th August (on the eve of 73rd
Independence Day) India launched IndiaRxiv, India’s first preprint service with the
collaboration of Open Access India and the Center for Open Science (COS), which is a non-
profit technology organization established in Virginia with an aim to "increase the openness,
integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research". IndiaRxiv act as a single open platform
providing free and open access to all publicly-funded scholarly outputs from India and also
Indian scholars with a way to share their research outputs. IndiaRxiv is functioning not only
for scholars to share their research outputs and to learn peer reviews, but also to provide
public access to the current research, allowing authors to draw their feedback and ideas and
continuing on existing work. India Government’s NITI AYOG envisions that five of the
scientific research institutions in India should be among the top 100 in the world by end of
2022. The Open Access India community aims that research output is made freely available;
it will attain resource sharing. It is hoped that the IndiaRxiv repository will develop into a
portal for sharing and displaying the current research produced across all the institutes and
universities in the country and the open access community will strive towards this goal.
According to “OPEN SCIENCE INDIA REPORT” conducted by Arul George Scaria as a
principal investigator (2018), which is the first extensive research regarding open science in
India. The report analyses that science in India has facing a severe crisis in a holistic manner.
It is in this background that the Centre for Innovation, IP and Competition (CIIPC), planned
to start a project for determining the optimal legal and policy measures for an active and
successful open science movement in India. For this, they conducted the survey among
researchers working in institutions located in India, across multiple disciplines to assess and
analyze the attitudes and practices of researchers regarding sharing of scholarly outputs,
transparency, collaborations, and replication. Also, they analyzed the present and past
policies, various ‘open’ initiatives, and citizen science movement in India. Some of the
important data were collected through applications filed under the RTI Act, 2005 and
conducted interviews with various collaborators in the area for a deep understanding of the
different issues and threats for the open science movement in India. The report finds that no
common definition exists for open science and proposes a definition for open science is that
“scientific inquiries wherein the characteristics of accessibility, transparency, usability, and
non- or minimal existence of IP restrictions, are evident and exist throughout all stages of
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research. It is also characterized by openness to inclusiveness, collaboration, constant and
continuous transfer of knowledge between producers and users of knowledge, and
prioritization of research and innovation based on social needs.” The findings of the survey
draw a desolate picture of the status. Majority of the population agreed that open science is
important for research (89.74%) and outputs of publicly funded research should be accessible
(91.96%); but only a minority is ready to share their publications (35.07%) or data (8.41%)
through open access repositories. The study analyzes that there is some contrast exists in
open science movement in India.
CONCLUSION
Opening up the research process and the outcomes can potentially have many benefits.
According to Friesike and Schildhauer (2015) open science aims at “increasing research
quality, boosting collaboration, speeding up the research process, making the assessment of
research more transparent, promoting public access to scientific results, as well as introducing
more people to academic research”. According to the words of Sridhar Gutam, Convenor,
Open Access India, “Let’s give freedom to our scholarly literature and make it available
freely to the world.”If we want to work towards a future where science is accessible, socially
relevant, better, and more reliable, we must adopt open science practices in our own
capacities, and advocate for changes for a more equitable knowledge ecosystem. The study
aimed to analyze the open science and its components and also investigate the open science
in the context of India. So India is existing in the initial stages of open science initiative and
she is on the right path.
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