Shared Value Foundation has partnered with Utrecht University’s International Development Studies (IDS) group to promote and disseminate the importance of open science. We believe that everybody, not just those who are working in research or in academia should have access to research data and other research processes. While open science has been gaining traction in the past years, the full appreciation and practice of open science is still very much to be desired.
Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.
Why Open Science
The world of publishing still uses a classic publication model, where for example (academic) articles are placed behind a paywall that can only be accessed by subscribers. Individual articles in humanities and social sciences can be individually downloaded for 30-100 USD. This is a vicious cycle that in most cases rich universities make their research accessible only to other rich universities.
Open Science advocates for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) data and open data sharing. It should become the default for the results of EU-funded scientific research. The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimise the reuse of data. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings. Published materials are free to access and read online.
In this section, we will publish more information about Open Science, how this will benefit everyone, as well as making research outputs from students, academics, researchers and practitioners more visible and accessible.