Hello. Welcome to the first unit of this tutorial.
In this unit, we will introduce and define Open Science.
To start with, access to science and scientific knowledge is actually a human right, it is part of the Human Rights Declaration.
Article 27 states that everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to participate in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Open Science aims to participate in insuring this right is respected.
So now, let's see how Open Science is usually defined.
A first definition of Open Science taken from Wikipedia is that Open Science is the movement to make scientific research, including publications, data, physical samples, and software and its dissemination to all levels of society a matter or proficient.
This definition is very close to one used by Foster Open Science.
Foster Open Science is one of the main organizations that aim at promoting Open Science.
Historically, Open Science is the meeting point of a number of movements or communities.
Among them are a number of scientific movements to improve specific fields.
One of those that we will encounter in several places in this course is rooted in psychological sciences.
And others, well, other things like Propient actually owe more to health sciences and physics.
Another important movement that contributed to Open Science is the Open Source Software movement.
All that being said, the history of Open Science is still being written.
Another definition which can be found in one of the end books for Open Science is of Open Science as a collection of actions to make scientific processes more transparent and results more accessible.
The goal of Open Science is to build a more replicable and robust science which Open Science does by using new technologies, altering incentives, and changing attitudes.
Another definition that has been proposed by compiling and reviewing the literature on Open Science, and this definition is that Open Science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks.
Open Research, in and of itself, relates the process of knowledge production and dissemination.
Open Scholarship can be understand as including Open Research plus the resources enabling it, including free Open Source software.
Open Scholarship as a term is sometimes used interchangeably with Open Science.
Now, despite definitions of Open Science as one movement, and as previous definitions already hinted at, there are a number of different aspects or focuses that can be found in Open Science.
They have been presented as five different schools of thought.
The five schools are the following.
The pragmatic school focuses on collaborative research.
The infrastructure school is most concerned with the technological architecture, which includes creating and maintaining a number of relevant platforms and tools.
The democratic school focuses on the access to knowledge, meaning publications, and sees the current publication system in which most articles are behind pay-walls as one core obstacle to science being open.
The measurement school focuses on the alternative impact measurement. So in this perspective it