[sc-announce] What's open science? -- Science Commons blog

Donna Wentworth dwentworth at creativecommons.org
Fri Aug 22 07:27:20 EDT 2008


What's open science?<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/08/22/whats-open-science/>
August
22nd, 2008

That's the question many of us have been grappling with in the wake of two
unforgettable unconferences <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference>:
BioBarCamp <http://www.barcamp.org/BioBarCamp> and
SciFoo<http://www.nature.com/scifoo/>
.

Over at Science in the open <http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/>,
Cameron Neylon writes<http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/08/07/biobarcamp-meeting-friends-old-and-new-and-virtual/>
:

During the introduction [at BioBarCamp] many people expressed an interest in
"Open Science", "Open Data", or some other open stuff, yet it was already
pretty clear that many people meant many different things by this. I think
for me the most striking outcome of [a session to define it] was that not
only is this a radically new concept for many people but that many people
don't have any background understanding of open source software either which
can make the discussion totally impenetrable to them. This, in my view
strengthens the need for having some clear brands, or standards, that are
easy to point to and easy to sign up to (or not).

This is one of the reasons why Science Commons has published a set of
principles for open science, which we prepared for our satellite
workshop<http://sciencecommons.org/events/esof-satellite-event>at ESOF
2008 <http://www.esof2008.org/> (you can download the
PDF<http://sciencecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/esof_recommendations_onepage_medres.pdf>or
read
them online here<http://sciencecommons.org/resources/readingroom/principles-for-open-science/>).
We hope not only to help bring more clarity to the discussion, but also to
pave the way for integrating all kinds of open science projects in a
shared collaborative
infrastructure<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/03/24/whats-cyberinfrastructure/>
.

For a taste of the conversation happening elsewhere, here are snippets from
relevant posts published in the last few weeks:

Cat Allman @ the Google Open Source
Blog<http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/08/scifoo-200-of-worlds-top-scientists.html>:
"Certain themes recurred [at SciFoo 2008]. One was the need to do a better
job of open sourcing data within the science community, including negative
results; such sharing would enable collaboration and prevent scientists from
'reinventing the wheel.'"

Shirley Wu @ One Big
Lab<http://onebiglab.blogspot.com/2008/08/future-of-science-gradical-change-and.html>:
"At BioBarCamp <http://barcamp.org/BioBarCamp> this past weekend (many
thanks to John Cumbers and Attila Csordas <http://pimm.wordpress.com/> for
organizing!), the future of science became a recurring theme, with an
impromptu discussion on open science the first day and spirited sessions on
open science, web 2.0, the data
commons<http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/05/11/more-on-the-science-exchance-or-building-and-capitalising-a-data-commons/>,
change in science<http://friendfeed.com/e/d9eacb34-0fa4-4a3e-a807-2f6079bf2c53/Keeping-Stalin-out-of-science-Jeremy-England/>,
science 'worship', and redefining
'impact<http://friendfeed.com/e/f2ca2659-4632-4129-84b8-b12d726a9eb6/How-should-scientific-articles-be-measured/>'
and 'failure<http://friendfeed.com/e/db02519d-031a-4a00-a41a-76abb0326da5/Failure-in-science-Eva-Amsen/>'
the second. Each of these topics could be their own blog series, and, in
fact, many of them are <http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.379.11>. Even
if people didn't always agree on the details, it was clear that everyone
there (a biased group, inarguably) agreed that change is necessary, and
inevitable. The question is, what will that change look like, and how will
we get there?"

Cameron Neylon @ Science in the
open<http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/08/17/re-inventing-the-wheel-again-what-the-open-science-movement-can-learn-from-the-history-of-the-pdb/>:
"Helen [Berman] made the point strongly that it had taken 37 years to get
the [Protein Data Bank <http://www.pdb.org/>] to where it is today; a gold
standard international and publically available repository of a specific
form of research data supported by a strong set of community accepted, and
enforced, rules and conventions. We don't want to take another 37 years to
achieve the widespread adoption of high standards in data availability and
open practice in research more generally."

Chris Patil @ Ouroboros<http://ouroboros.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/opening-science-how-unconferences-changed-my-life/>:
"Given a suitable set of one-to-one and one-to-many agreements between the
stakeholders [in scientific research], then, the benefits of sharing could
come to outweigh any conceivable advantage derived from secrecy. Perhaps
'open science' could be defined (for the moment) as the quest to design and
optimize these agreements, along with the quest to design the best tools and
licenses to empower scientists as they move from the *status quo* into the
next system — because (and this is very important) if it is to ever succeed,
open science has to work not because of governmental fiat or because a large
number of people suddenly start marching in lockstep to an unnatural tune,
but because it works better than competing models."

Our own Kaitlin Thaney <http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/thaney/>,
who organized the ESOF satellite workshop, led an impromptu
session<http://friendfeed.com/e/cda930dd-8e36-45ad-9710-c0437138384d/Random-session-on-What-is-open-science/>on
open science at BioBarCamp, and we're eager to continue the
conversation.
If you're interested in helping to keep the ball rolling, let us
know<science at creativecommons.org>
.
 Donna Wentworth
Communications Specialist
Science Commons
http://sciencecommons.org
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