Abstract
Abstract Despite the increasing availability of Open Science (OS) infrastructure and the rise in policies to change behaviour, OS practices are not yet the norm. While pioneering researchers are developing OS practices, the majority sticks to status quo. To transition to common practice, we must engage a critical proportion of the academic community. In this transition, OS Communities (OSCs) play a key role. OSCs are bottom-up learning groups of scholars that discuss OS within and across disciplines. They make OS knowledge more accessible and facilitate communication among scholars and policymakers. Over the past two years, eleven OSCs were founded at several Dutch university cities. In other countries, similar OSCs are starting up. In this article, we discuss the pivotal role OSCs play in the large-scale transition to OS. We emphasize that, despite the grassroot character of OSCs, support from universities is critical for OSCs to be viable, effective, and sustainable.
Highlights
Over the past years, science has witnessed a shift towards openness, transparency, and reproducibility—a movement known under the umbrella term ‘Open Science’ (OS).1 In response to increased awareness on existing challenges related to the reliability and accountability in scientific work, scholars2 are motivated to increase the transparency of various aspects of their work, starting from the initial research and analysis plans to the dissemination of the final product (Bezjak et al 2018; Munafoet al. 2017; Nosek et al 2015, 2018; Stall et al 2019)
As OS Communities (OSCs), we align with the European Commission (EC) and emphasize the collaborative aspect of OS: Open Science represents a new approach to the scientific process based on cooperative work and new ways of diffusing knowledge by using digital technologies and new collaborative tools
There is likely no societal agent that can single-handedly solve the problem of widespread OS adoption, we argue that bottom-up OSCs, due to their peer-based character and format, have the strongest leverage to reach a critical mass by giving voice to the scholars themselves
Summary
Science has witnessed a shift towards openness, transparency, and reproducibility—a movement known under the umbrella term ‘Open Science’ (OS). In response to increased awareness on existing challenges related to the reliability and accountability in scientific work, scholars are motivated to increase the transparency of various aspects of their work, starting from the initial research and analysis plans to the dissemination of the final product (Bezjak et al 2018; Munafoet al. 2017; Nosek et al 2015, 2018; Stall et al 2019). Expectations from journals, funders, and policy makers to improve the accessibility and transparency of scholarly products are steadily increasing (Aczel et al 2019; Burgelman et al 2019; Morey et al 2016; Perkel 2019; SPARC Europe 2019; Teytelman 2018), further feeding the upward spiral towards more transparent workflows By opening up their practices, scholars make their work less errorprone (Fosang and Colbran 2015; Hales et al 2019) and more visible, to peers from the same and other scientific disciplines—as evidenced by higher citation rates (Colavizza et al 2020; McKiernan et al 2016; Piwowar and Vision 2013)—and the general public, who can appreciate the economic benefits of knowledge dissemination (Fell 2019). We showcase the role of OS communities (OSCs) as learning groups of scholars that facilitate effective adoption, and normalization, of policy changes and technological innovation in contemporary science (Nosek 2019)
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