Open Science: Purpose, Benefits, and What it Means for You
Although it’s not a new term, “open science” is quickly becoming more widely and frequently used in all types of academic settings. But what exactly is open science, and why does it matter?
What is Open Science?
To begin, open science is the movement to enable research, and its dissemination, to be accessible by all members of society, free of cost. This includes publications, data, and software. Research is often a collaborative effort. Due to this, the support for open science derives from the idea that all of society should benefit from its findings. Open science is a broader term that encompasses the following:
- Open research data
- Open scientific publications
- Open access
- Open peer review
- Open collaboration
What is the Value of Open Science to your Department or Research Office?
Open science allows you to benefit from current scientific findings. It increases efficiency and quality of research, allows for an expansion of innovation, and escalates collaboration.
1. EfficiencyIncreased access to publications and journals can reduce the duplication of research and the cost of creating and reusing data. It allows others to build and expand on prior work without repeating the same information.
2. Quality
Due to a wider evaluation, open science makes research more reproducible, allowing for more replications and validations of data. This helps alleviate the issue of manipulation of data.
3. InnovationOpen science provides individuals with an increased access to research, which in turn, leads to more innovation of new products and ideas.
4. Collaboration and Societal BenefitsIncreased access to research and publications allows for an increase in national and global collaboration. This speeds up the transfer of knowledge and assists in addressing issues that require a wider range of attention and collaboration - such as global warming.
In addition to these 4 key benefits, open research publications have been proven to be cited more often. In a study conducted over four years,it was found that open access books were cited fifty percent more than books that were not open access.
How OpenScholar Supports Open Science
OpenScholar’s mission is to make it easier for research institutions and their faculty to have professional, research-centric websites - to ultimately bring their ideas to the world faster, more efficiently and at low cost. OpenScholar supports open science in 3 key ways:
1. We help you show your work.Our easy-to-use preset templates allow you to showcase your work with the researcher’s use case in mind. The software was designed by researchers, for researchers. Best practice information architecture, a powerful citation engine and other tools automatically intuit the needs of the scientist or researcher.
2. We help you boost SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search engines, in order to rank higher on Google. Our templates encourage you to tag the keywords in your current research in order to boost your SEO and give others the ability to find your work faster.
3. We help connect you with others.
Our search engine, LYNX, allows you to find and connect with fellow researchers based on the similarity of keywords tagged in the research.
OpenScholar provides the infrastructure that supports open science. Check out our lab lookbook to see how we help our customers reach their goals.
If openness, visibility, and transparency are important to you, then our missions are aligned. When you use OpenScholar to show your work, share your work, and collaborate on research, magic happens: science advances, and outcomes are accelerated.
