Many weeks ago, I did a podcast interview with some friends of mine in the science communication student group,\u00a0Science in the News (SITN)<\/a>. We talked about a bunch of things, but for part of the interview, we delved into\u00a0open science<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the push to make the products and process of scientific research available to all. Here are some things I learned:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Open access journal articles are available to anyone who wants to read them. Open access journals are particularly valuable to:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are, of course, some downsides to Open Access and many of them stem from\u00a0paying for publication<\/i>. Because open access publishers don\u2019t get subscription fees, one of the ways they make money is by having authors pay to publish. This presents an inherent conflict of interest for open access publishers; there\u2019s the\u00a0potential for low quality work<\/i>\u00a0to be published simply because the authors pay for it. Indeed, so-called\u00a0predatory journals<\/a>\u00a0that do not have proper review but do accept publications and their associated fees exist. Of course, there is policing for this within the academic community and it is not an unsolvable problem. For instance, publishing reviews along with final articles (as some journals are already doing) shows potential authors that a publication carries out rigorous review. Finally, the need to pay for publication may also\u00a0prevent poorly funded labs from publishing at all.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beyond open access publications themselves, many within the open science movement also push for open data and reagent sharing. Open data essentially means that, any data that is used to create published analyses is made available for anyone to use and analyze on their own. Reagent sharing means that any materials constructed during the research process (particular DNA sequences, cell lines, or bacterial strains for instance) are made available for future researchers to use or re-test themselves. Proponents hope that open data and reagent sharing will make it easier to reproduce research results between labs, prevent researchers from recreating reagents unnecessarily, and accelerate future discovery.<\/p>\n In its purest form, open science also calls for results to be made available for review as they are obtained. This can be accomplished through online lab notebooks where researchers record their experiments as they\u2019re doing them. This seems unlikely in the near term given that many scientists worry about their ideas and work being stolen \u2013 particularly by larger and better funded labs that could potentially take ideas that show early success and run with them. Nonetheless, this is a fantastic goal to aim for, and the less pessimistic viewpoint (my own view point :D) says that it could lead to greater collaboration that accelerates science.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many weeks ago, I did a podcast interview with some friends of mine in the science communication student group,\u00a0Science in the News (SITN). We talked about a bunch of things, but for part of the interview, we delved into\u00a0open science\u00a0\u2013 the push to make the products and process of scientific research available to all. Here … <\/p>\nOpen Access Journals are a Huge Part of the Open Science Movement\u2026<\/h2>\n
![\"Open](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tylerjford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Open-Science.jpg?resize=300%2C224\")
While many scientific publications are closed \u2013 you have to pay for subscriptions in order to see the research published within them \u2013 the research published in open access journals can be read by all (scientists and nonscientists alike). Open access journals have gained popularity as the internet has grown because it is easy to host the research papers published within them on the web. This alleviates the need to pay for printing and distributing the physical journal.\n\n
Other Upsides to Open Access Journals Include:<\/h3>\n
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Downsides:<\/h3>\n
\u2026but Open Access Journals Aren\u2019t the Whole Story<\/h2>\n