Open Synthesis: on the need for evidence synthesis to embrace Open Science

Abstract

The Open Science movement can be broadly summarised as aiming to promote integrity, repeatability and transparency across all aspects of research, from data collection to publication. Systematic reviews and systematic maps aim to provide a reliable synthesis of the evidence on a particular topic, making use of methods that seek to maximise repeatability and comprehensives whilst minimising subjectivity and bias. The central tenet of repeatability is operationalised by transparently reporting methodological activities in detail, such that all actions could be replicated and verified. To date, evidence synthesis has only partially embraced Open Science, typically striving for Open Methodology and Open Access, and occasionally providing sufficient information to be considered to have Open Data for some published reviews. Evidence synthesis communities needs to better embrace Open Science not only to balance knowledge access and increase efficiency, but also to increase reliability, trust and reuse of information collected and synthesised within a review: concepts fundamental to systematic reviews and maps. All aspects of Open Science should be embraced: Open Methodology, Open Data, Open Source and Open Access. In doing so, evidence synthesis can be made more equal, more efficient and more trustworthy. I provide concrete recommendations of how CEE and others can fully embrace Open Synthesis.

Práticas de Ciência Aberta da comunidade acadêmica brasileira: estudo a partir da produção científica

“…Até o presente, não há consenso formado sobre quais são essas práticas Maciel;Abdo, 2015;Haddaway, 2018;Vicente Saez;Martinez-Fuentes, 2018). Conforme critério dos autores deste trabalho, o estudo de Pontika et al (2015) apresenta uma taxonomia útil para visualizar o domínio da Ciência Aberta (Figura 1), fornecendo uma terminologia estruturada sobre as principais iniciativas e práticas associadas.…”

Open synthesis and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020

“…Some of the problems with traditional approaches to evidence synthesis described above (access to data, methods, publications, etc.) can be and indeed are being mitigated by applying these Open Science principles to evidence synthesis; the result has been termed Open Synthesis [6]. Open Synthesis was first proposed to apply Open Access, Open Data, Open Source and Open Methodology to evidence synthesis, with the possible addition of Open Education.…”

“…They would also ensure that the research in the field is more collaborative, transparent, and rigorous. This article argues for, and illustrates how, to apply the principles of Open Science to the field of evidence synthesis, a concept we refer to as Open Synthesis [6]. We use the COVID-19 pandemic as a case in point to highlight the potential significant benefits of Openness to the research, policy, and practice communities.…”

EviAtlas: a tool for visualising evidence synthesis databases

“…1 The distinction here highlights that a human-readable, database is in essence a summary of a machine-readable, tidy dataset, often with some associated information loss that can be readily digested by the human eye but not by a computer. There is a dire need for publishing machine-readable data alongside human-readable data to encourage Open Science [26], reuse of systematic map data and meta-research.…”