Open science is gaining attention as policy initiatives, such as the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and the Nelson Memo, and the open access/open source movements develop and mature. UNESCO defines open science as:
“an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone, to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community. It comprises all scientific disciplines and aspects of scholarly practices, including basic and applied sciences, natural and social sciences and the humanities, and it builds on the following key pillars: open scientific knowledge, open science infrastructures, science communication, open engagement of societal actors and open dialogue with other knowledge systems.”
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (p. 7)
Stakeholders in research and communication – researchers, funders, policy-makers, research institutions, publishers, technologists, librarians, private and public interests, etc. – now have the task of understanding how open science policies and practices are adopted. This requires a common understanding of indicators, followed by data collection and analysis.
PLOS (the Public Library of Science) conducted an Open Science Indicators (OSI) study comparing how data, software code and preprints are shared from 60,000 research articles it published with those of 6,000 open access articles on similar topics published by others between January 2019 and June 2022. The goals of the study are to:
- Improve ability to measure success of solutions
- Understand different communities and co-create new solutions
- Support Open Science initiatives outside PLOS with reliable data
- Increase adoption of Open Science practices globally
You can read more about the OSI study here and here (Scholarly Kitchen post) and download and use the data. Importantly, PLOS is demonstrating open science practices by openly sharing its study guiding principles, methodology, definitions, data and analysis. Initial data analysis shows promising results on accuracy of data, ability to continue and expand study of indicators at scale, and increasing adoption of open science practices. PLOS is clear that these indicators are designed to monitor practices but NOT to rank journals, researchers or indicators. The OSI study is a robust offering to begin our understanding of open science adoption and impact.
