What is Open Science?

Open Science is a movement that promotes the accessibility of scientific research to all citizens with free access and for free. This novel way of practicing science includes open research and open notebook science, research methods in which experiments and data obtained through these are automatically public access.
Open Science brings with it the possibility of shared co-construction and open innovation generation, both in public spheres and in private contexts. In recent years, technologies and the Internet have facilitated these open practices.

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Open science Ecosystem

A little history

Before the advent of scientific journals, scientists had little to gain and much to lose by publicizing their scientific discoveries. Many scientists, including Galileo, Kepler, Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke, claimed their discoveries, describing in documents codified in anagrams and then distributed the codified text. Their intention were to develop their discovery in something that could benefit themselves and until then did not reveal it as their own.
Finally, the system of individual patronage ceased to provide the scientific production that society began to demand. Individual patrons could not finance all scientists, who had unstable careers and needed regular funding. The development that changed this was a tendency to share research by multiple scientists in a multi-user-financed academy. In 1660 England established the Royal Society. Between the years 1660 and 1793, Governments gave official recognition to other 70 scientific organizations.
The Internet revolutionized the world of human information and communication. Up to 2003 it is estimated that civilization had produced around 5 exabytes of information and that now thanks to the Internet that information is produced in just two days. So thanks to the new technologies it is easier and feasible to share scientific information.

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Galileo Galilei Scientific Publication

Principles of Open Science

Open Science is based on 6 principles:

  • Open Methodologies
  • Open peer Review
  • Open Software and hardware
  • Open Data
  • Open Access
  • Open Educational resources (MOOC)

Scientists and researchers are currently receiving public and private aid with which they cover their expenses in research that they carry out.

What degrees of openness has Open Science?

  • Open Research:  In this type of open science are published with free access and for free all the methodologies, processes and conclusions obtained in an investigation.
  • Open Access: It is very similar to the Open Research modality, but without interprofessional collaboration. They disseminate the findings of their research for free and permanent through the Internet.
  • Open Notebook: It is the most extreme type of open science, since all the data are disseminated, whether they are failed investigations, raw data…
  • CrowdScience: Research is not only done by scientists but also by ordinary citizens.

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Infrastructure for Open Science

How to publish with open access?

Free Open Science has rights reserved and Open Science with free access is free information that can be reused and has no rights reserved.
It can be use the Greenway, which consists of a public file where the author can upload his draft of the investigation.
The golden Way is to pay an Open Access publisher to publish for free their research, ie, maintaining the copyright.

Benefits of Open Science?

Opening and collaborating processes in open scientific production have a wide potential to generate situations in which all those involved win. Researchers gain recognition, visibility, access to new knowledge and sources of inspiration; knowledge users gain free access and possibilities to contribute and intervene in the processes of knowledge production.
The interaction between researchers promotes processes that amplify the collective intelligence of the group by the mere fact of sharing information that allows to validate and discard assumptions, hypotheses or lines of inquiry. Scientists learn faster and more accurately by interacting with other researchers working on similar issues. In addition, unnecessary duplication of effort is avoided and reproducibility of the results achieved is facilitated.
Better access to resources and opportunities for participation in scientific production allow society to intervene in the direction of research lines. This makes it more feasible for science to be able to respond more effectively to social demands.

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Open Science Schema

Examples of success histories

Large projects have emerged from free scientific software such as the Open Science project, which brings together several natural science scientists who have dedicated themselves to the development and promulgation of software for data analysis, simulations and models. It easy to find very diverse programs, ordered on their website by scientific disciplines, and although there is a clear preference for microbiology, aeronautics and computational science, there are also sections of anthropology, forensic Sciences and a dedicated part to tools, programs very useful for any researcher who is devoted to the quantitative work.

For more info: http://openscience.org/

The Open science has been responsible for the creation of many important software products around the world, such as the Linux operating system, the Firefox browser or Wikipedia.
On June the 12th 2017, an open Science summit was held in Brussels for the European research and innovation system.

For more info: https://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?eventcode=44D86060-FBA1-1BD1-9355822B162BB0EE&pg=events

UE-+-ENPISoltel Group started to work in related concepts to open science many years ago. For example, Demokratio’s Soltel, developed in 2013, is an open government platform to foster and manage citizen participation in local politics, which is used in different regions of Spain, but also in Cyprus, Tunisia, Lebanon and Palestine, with the OpenWind initiative, funded by European Union ENPI CBC MED Programme. For more info: http://www.openwind.eu/pilot-initiatives

Demokratio implements the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers to Member States of the European Community on e-democracy, and meets the requirements, known so far, of Transparency Law: information, transparency, participation. Also it uses open source software, open data and other concepts related to this post.
Since the end of last year, Soltel is working in a platform for citizen science for observing and managing the health of the environment and nature in different regions and countries.
These volunteer citizens will play a very important role in studying pests, diseases, invasive species and other incidents that may occur in the environment in general.

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The main differentiating element consists of a bidirectional platform where all this information can be shared between researchers and citizens; and in this way, increase the awareness of environment protection and science progress.