Motivating participation in open science by examining researcher incentives.

Sarah E Ali-Khan,E Richard Gold,Liam W Harris

doi:10.7554/elife.29319

Abstract

Support for open science is growing, but motivating researchers to participate in open science can be challenging. This in-depth qualitative study draws on interviews with researchers and staff at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital during the development of its open science policy. Using thematic content analysis, we explore attitudes toward open science, the motivations and disincentives to participate, the role of patients, and attitudes to the eschewal of intellectual property rights. To be successful, an open science policy must clearly lay out expectations, boundaries and mechanisms by which researchers can engage, and must be shaped to explicitly support their values and those of key partners, including patients, research participants and industry collaborators.

Highlights

Open science involves making scientific knowledge openly and practically available in order to accelerate discovery, innovation and clinical translation (Gold, 2016; Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, 2016; Fecher and Friesike, 2014)
Almost half our interviewees noted that the concept is vague (Fecher and Friesike, 2014; Grubb and Easterbrook, 2011; OECD, 2015) and expressed uncertainty about what precisely open science would require of them (Open Research Data Task Force, 2017; Neylon, 2017; Ferguson, 2014)
The absence of clearly articulated definitions raised fears that open science practice may extend beyond comfort levels

Summary

Introduction

Open science involves making scientific knowledge (in the form of papers, data, research tools, and other outputs) openly and practically available in order to accelerate discovery, innovation and clinical translation (Gold, 2016; Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, 2016; Fecher and Friesike, 2014). The MNI committed to make publicly available all positive and negative data by the date of first publication, to open its biobank to registered researchers and, perhaps most significantly, to withdraw its support of patenting on any direct research outputs (Figure 1; Poupon et al, 2017; Owens, 2016a; Rouleau, 2017) The span of this openness raises unique hopes and concerns for stakeholders, and offers an important opportunity to examine and understand the potential benefits and costs of open science. Recent evidence suggests that providing incentives for individual researchers to participate is the key rate-limiting step (Kidwell et al, 2016; Longo and Drazen, 2016; Fecher et al, 2015) This has stimulated many to think more deeply about how cultural factors, policies and metrics may affect the uptake of open practices by researchers (European Commission, 2017; Wilsdon, 2015; Harley, 2013; Neylon, 2017). We applied qualitative thematic content analysis to these data to identify key topics for discussion and

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Discussion

Conclusion