Reinventing Science - From Journals to Open Science

Michael Nielsen gives a very nice historical overview on the culture of sharing scientific information at his TED presentation in Waterloo.

As also stated here in the blog, the scientist are generally not rewarded by sharing their information openly. This seems to be a main inhibitor for data and ideas reaching their full potential. The systems financing scientists are simply not geared to welcome sharing discoveries openly. Scientists "jobs" are basically to mass produce articles in quantity as it is a demand in many universities - not to let their ideas have sex with others and advance knowledge faster. This is also turned by the Scientific American in an article from October.

One of my favorite references on the failure of the reward system is Daniel Pinks summarizing of 50 years of research on the subject. And the result is deafening: rewards impair the cognitive abilities! Or, a carrot on a stick makes you dumber. 

Nielsen excel in his talk by making a sucker punch to the sceptics when describing how one of the greatest human monuments, The Human Genome Project. This effort would have been an absolute failure had the idea of Open Science not eventually been forced upon the researchers by grant providers. Researchers were simply too busy "doing science" (publishing) to have time to upload genome sequences. These sequences now uploaded and publicly accessible are feeding hundreds of new science projects just by existing.

It takes bravery, especially by young scientists, to openly embrace and promote Open Science (flattered). But we have to if we are to change the rewarding system of scientists so the scientific community (an others) can benefit openly by the research.

And to those who have not read the previous posts on Open Science I answer "no" in advance to the inevitable referring to journals as already embodying Open Science. Peer reviewed journals are not "open" even when offering the "Open Access" option! Open Access is restricted by people having enough finances to publish for everybody to access the publication. And rarely data sets follow a publication. 

Lots of work to be done!

Michael Nielsen on Open Science and his book on the subject Reinventing Science:

Open Access - rich can publish, poor can read

Nature News published an article "US seeks to make science free for all" by Declan Butler explaining how Open Access publishing of scientific journals is marching forward. Actually it is doing so well that US politicians are pushing forward to make it mandatory.

This is, in my opinion, a step forward towards Open Science. But as stated before, there is a large drawback with Open Access (other scientists may have more): rich can publish, but poor can only read. It is very expensive to publish as Open Access, that it is not even an option to many universities, including my own. So the published science is not "free" to all. It is accessible to read by anyone with an Internet, but it is open universally for the authors.

The big trouble is how to publish and read free of charge, and retain the credibility of peer-reviews.

I hope for better platforms in the future.

Further reading