Open Research in Business and Information Systems Engineering

Abstract

We can all witness rapid changes in the way people conduct research, publish results, and share artifacts. This is affecting the way journals and conferences operate. It seems that we are gradually moving towards truly ‘‘open research’’, sometimes also referred to as ‘‘open science’’. Open science is the movement towards making scientific research and related artifacts (data, software, etc.) accessible to all levels of inquisition. Although digitization and the Internet have dramatically changed, globalized, and accelerated communication in general, the way that research results are communicated through journals remains fairly traditional (Groen 2007). BISE is no exception. The reviewing process is double-blind, but reviews are not publically available. A small fraction of papers are available through Springer’s Open Access (Springer 2016), but the majority of BISE papers still require a subscription. Accepted papers may use or present data and software, but these are not required to be public (thus making it difficult to verify results and compare approaches). Of course there are all kinds of practical reasons why journals like BISE do not enforce ‘‘open research’’ (yet). However, it is good to deliberate on the topic and seek feedback from the BISE community (Fig. 1). Why are we discussing the topic of ‘‘open research’’ now? It seems that the way we publish and disseminate results is about to change: Governments are discussing the topic, and elements of open research are becoming mandatory for government-funded research. For example, the European Commission is actively pushing ‘‘open science’’ (European Commission 2016). The Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science (Netherlands EU Presidency 2016) was written based on an open science meeting in April 2016 that was organized by the Dutch Presidency of the European Union. NWO, the Dutch science foundation, recently stated that ‘‘research results paid for by public funds should be freely accessible worldwide’’ (NWO 2016). Open research concerns both scientific publications and other forms of scientific output. There is a lot more to open research than just open access (i.e., publications that are freely accessible to all). For example, open access journals do not necessarily enforce the sharing of artifacts such as data sets and software. In fact, the last part of this editorial focuses on the sharing of these artifacts as they are vital for many of the results reported in BISE.