How To: Open Science

Tired of Recreating someone else’s work? - How Open Science can accelerate research and overcome reinvention

Have you ever found papers on algorithms but their implementation is missing? Found an interesting analysis but there is no way to check the results, as you don’t have access to the data they were derived from? Ever thought you had a great idea for a project, just to find out a year later that you are not the only research group following that specific idea? Not having access to other people’s code, data, metrics or even their plans for research projects often leads to unnecessary delays and scientific redundancies. There is an easy solution to overcome (almost) all of these issues. It’s called Open Science! What is Open Science? The UNESCO defines Open Science as a construct of “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 […]”. To ensure that everyone has access to scientific knowledge and infrastructure, Open Science focuses on four main concepts.

• Open scientific knowledge offers access to all knowledge produced during the scientific process. In detail this means open access to scientific publications, open educational resources, open methodology, open-source software and open data.
• Open Science infrastructures describe the sharing of research infrastructures, such as hardware, software and knowledge-based resources, between institutions and individuals.
• Open engagement of societal actors aims to make the scientific process more inclusive and accessible to everyone by extending research beyond the scientific community, e.g. with crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and citizen science.
• Open dialogue with other knowledge systems describes the inclusion of knowledge from multiple sources, e.g. local communities, indigenous people and marginalized scholars.

These concepts not only make scientific knowledge available, accessible and reusable for everyone, but also open the scientific process, making science more understandable to non-scientists and giving more people the opportunity to participate. This can lead to new insights, easier data collection and greater acceptance of research in society. In addition, open science can accelerate the scientific process through increased collaboration and information sharing.

How to make your science open?

Open science concepts can be included directly into your research cycle. The figure below shows open science concepts for each and every step of the research cycle. This means, you can implement open science concepts in your work even if you already started your project! For example, after specifying your research plan, for a given problem or research question, you can submit the plan to a registry in advance of your study (for example to the Open Science Framework). This Preregistration ensures that hypotheses are neither generated and tested on the same data nor (unintentionally) changed after the data have been analyzed, thereby increasing the credibility of your results and avoiding bias. Visit the Center for Open Science Website to find a complete guide to preregistration. You can also increase the credibility of your results and insights by opening your data. Following Open Definition, ideally, “open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose”1. By making your data transparent and available, others have the chance to get a deeper understanding of your hypotheses and results but also add to your research. Of course, your own findings and research angles will still be cited as usual, and, as an additional benefit, a fresh set of eyes can help you answer research questions that otherwise might stay unanswered forever. Additionally, having access to other researchers’ data as well gives you the chance to see the bigger picture, add to their research as well and accelerate your own research by using their data.

Open Science in the research lifecycle, Inspired by the ZBMED’s research lifecycle

You want to learn more about Open Science and how you can implement it into your own workflows? The Center for Open Science offers a collection of articles, templates and a FAQ section on pre-registration. For open data you will find examples, a guide and a checklist on opennrw, NRW’s platform for open government data. For a general overview on open science check out the Open Science Framework or contact us! We offer personal help and troubleshooting for quick questions. For long-term support send us an informal application to our rent-an-expert project and we will accompany you on your way to open your research!