What does Open Science mean to me, and why is it important?
I was recently asked to record a snippet on Open Science, for the Open Science MOOC.
Here’s the statement that I prepared to organize my thoughts (I ended up rephrasing this as I talked for the recording, but the idea is there):
I still have improvements to make bring more openness to the entire spectrum of my academic work, but in the past I have focused on sharing my work and the processes behind my work online. Especially for experimental work, I find it important to blog about what works and what doesn’t work in the lab, and I’ve advocated in the past to use blogs to reduce publication bias. I also always document all the calculations behind what you can find in my journal papers in background reports that are in the public domain.
Here, in South America, open access publishing has a long tradition, as journals are typically not in the hands of commercial publishers, but instead led by scholars and funded by universities or governments.
From my personal perspective, open science is important to be able to reproduce the work of other researchers, and to be able to move research forward in a more efficient manner.
From the perspective of a developing region, open science is important for getting access to the materials we need to do our research.
Share with your peers!