Foundations for Open Scholarship Strategy Development

Abstract

<p>This document aims to agree on a broad, international strategy for the implementation of open scholarship that meets the needs of different national and regional communities but works globally.Scholarly research can be idealised as an inspirational process for advancing our collective knowledge to the benefit of all humankind. However, current research practices often struggle with a range of tensions, in part due to the fact that this collective (or “commons”) ideal conflicts with the competitive system in which most scholars work, and in part because much of the infrastructure of the scholarly world is becoming largely digital. What is broadly termed as Open Scholarship is an attempt to realign modern research practices with this ideal. We do not propose a definition of Open Scholarship, but recognise that it is a holistic term that encompasses many disciplines, practices, and principles, sometimes also referred to as Open Science or Open Research. We choose the term Open Scholarship to be more inclusive of these other terms. When we refer to science in this document, we do so historically and use it as shorthand for more general scholarship.The purpose of this document is to provide a concise analysis of where the global Open Scholarship movement currently stands: what the common threads and strengths are, where the greatest opportunities and challenges lie, and how we can more effectively work together as a global community to recognise and address the top strategic priorities. This document was inspired by the Foundations for OER Strategy Development and work in the FORCE11 Scholarly Commons Working Group, and developed by an open contribution working group.Our hope is that this document will serve as a foundational resource for continuing discussions and initiatives about implementing effective strategies to help streamline the integration of Open Scholarship practices into a modern, digital research culture. Through this, we hope to extend the reach and impact of Open Scholarship into a global context, making sure that it is truly open for all. We also hope that this document will evolve as the conversations around Open Scholarship progress, and help to provide useful insight for both global co-ordination and local action. We believe this is a step forward in making Open Scholarship the norm.Ultimately, we expect the impact of widespread adoption of Open Scholarship to be diverse. We expect novel research practices to accelerate the pace of innovation, and therefore stimulate critical industries around the world. We could also expect to see an increase in public trust of science and scholarship, as transparency becomes more normative. As such, we expect interest in Open Scholarship to increase at multiple levels, due to its inherent influence on society and global economics.</p>

A tale of two 'opens': intersections between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship

“…While it is difficult to identify whether Open Source or Open Scholarship came 'first' due to their dynamic histories, both draw from the notions of common goods (and specifically digital common goods that are non-rivalrous) (Ostrom et al 2002;Frischmann, Madison, and Strandburg 2014), and unrestricted participation and sharing based on the underlying values of equity and sustainability, among others. Compared to FOSS, Open Scholarship is practically more complex (Mirowski 2018); the former only relates to software development (including infrastructure, governance, legal and funding issues), whereas the latter regards the entire process of scholarship, including research articles, grant proposals, data, software, educational materials and methods, and research evaluation (Katz, McInnes, et al 2018;Tennant, Beamer, et al 2019); of which sharing the outputs from is now widely implemented and even mandated within many areas of scholarship (Vincent-Lamarre et al 2016).…”

“…Taking these described tendencies as a line of further evolution, more and more scholars To compound this taxonomic complexity even further, 'openness' in scholarship is often used at a number of different scales; for example, lab groups or teams, individuals, and institutions (Tennant, Beamer, et al 2019). Thus, 'Open Scholarship' is often applied indiscriminately to mean very different things, but with the same blanket terminology applied.…”

“…Second, there remains a need to rigorously define and enforce the philosophy, values, and principles of Open Scholarship, and explore how these underpin the practices, and to have consensus reached on this within the scholarly community. This would address the lack of common understanding, which has impeded the widespread adoption of the strategic direction and goals behind Open Scholarship, prevented it from becoming a true social 'movement', and separated researchers into disintegrated groups with differing, and often contested, definitions and levels of adoption of openness (Tennant, Beamer, et al 2019). Rebecca Willen has also identified that there might be two, perhaps three, different sub-movements that intersect in different ways, involving 'open science', 'replicable science', and 'justice-oriented science' .…”

“…It is incumbent on the Open Scholarship community to develop and coordinate strategies for transitioning to OA, Open Data, and FOSS in academia that encompass social and cultural issues (Tennant, Beamer, et al 2019). We should strive for an Open Scholarship in which science as a vocation is supported, and foundational ideals around 'hacking' and 'gift-giving' are allowed to find new spaces.…”

“…Furthermore, this highlights the problem that such forms of 'closedness' are often more difficult to see because they are more about violating principles than any specific practices, with the unintended consequence that 'openness' can actually lead to new forms of enclosure (Tkacz 2012;Mirowski 2018). It might be the case that substantial intervention is now required from public administration bodies in parallel with the mobilisation and strategic coordination of research communities around these issues, seeing as this involves the transfer of billions of euros/dollars of public funds each year to commercial entities (Di Cosmo 2006;Tennant, Beamer, et al 2019).…”