Open Science practices

Open Science practices

/ Wed, 07/03/2024 - 09:31

Abstract

In the current scholarly communication system, Diamond OA publishers are expected to be implementers and promoters of Open Science (OS). They need to be acquainted with OS principles, have them embedded in their policies, and ensure that their workflows are aligned with best practices and standards for facilitating and incentivising OS.

Main Text

Open Science (OS) is fast becoming the default way for working on and communicating scholarly content today. Even though lately more emphasis is put on other scholarly outputs (like research data) and communication channels, the relevance of traditional publications (like journals, books or conference proceedings) remains, and it is important for all publishers and publishing service providers to adapt to the new landscape, and find ways to openly interact with other stakeholders.

Open access and open science policies

For each Diamond open access publisher, it is important that it possesses a thorough understanding of what OS is and what it entails. According to UNESCO (2021), it is “an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone, to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community”. The publisher needs to reflect on different aspects of OS (not just open access) that are of relevance to its publishing activities and services, reach decisions on outstanding issues, and clearly communicate its policies. The issues that need to be addressed by the policies include: authors’ rights, copyright and licensing, research data sharing and data availability, research protocols and methods sharing and publishing, open research software, open peer review, preprints, repository deposits, publication and sharing of negative scientific results and incentives and rewards. All policies should be publicly available on the Publishers website.

In defining its policies on specific issues of open science, a Diamond OA publisher needs to consider and be aware of the policies of other related stakeholders: its parent institution, national and international governmental bodies or research funding organisations, and professional or disciplinary associations. Alignment with higher-level policies relevant to the publisher’s context is recommended, especially if it helps its authors comply with funders and institutional requirements.

Authors’ rights, copyright and licensing

Unlike traditional publishing, where the assignment of copyright to the publishers was common practice, within the OS framework a strong emphasis is put on authors retaining rights to their intellectual outputs, making them both openly available without delays and reusable under the terms of an open licence. Both, rights retention and the use of an open licence should not just provide content that is free to read, but true open access and reuse of knowledge for everyone (Labastida i Juan et al., 2023). Publishers should provide clear information to any user of the published content on the conditions of (re)use, in human and machine-readable form, on the article/chapter and publication level. Moreover, a Diamond OA publisher should provide clear information on its policy towards authors' rights, copyright and licensing. For journal publishers, the same information should be accurately reported in the relevant registries (such as DOAJ or Sherpa Romeo) and regularly updated.

Research data sharing and data availability policies

In the OS framework, research data have a dual role. It is acknowledged that research datasets have a value of their own, and Diamond OA publishers should encourage and enable the publication of datasets, their reuse, citation and crediting of their creators. In addition, the publishing system can greatly benefit from connecting the publications with the underlying data and making them available to editors, reviewers, and readers, to achieve greater transparency and reliability of published knowledge (Nosek et al., 2014). In their policies related to research data, Diamond OA publishers should follow best practices in providing guidance for data deposit and sharing, metadata description, data availability statements (including the valid reasons for exceptions from sharing), data citation and the use of persistent identifiers.

Publication and sharing of open research software, research protocols and methods, and negative scientific results

Opening up the process of scientific knowledge production can lead to greater efficiency of scientific work, transparency and regaining society’s trust in science and scholarship. Diamond OA publishers have a major role in the opening of the scientific process, since they can define policies and introduce practices that foster publishing and making available the different outputs, protocols and methods as they are relevant to specific disciplinary, epistemic and methodological contexts. Whenever appropriate, early sharing and registering of the study designs and reporting on the negative results should be encouraged by publishers. 

Open peer review

Open peer review is the preferred practice of OS. It aims to improve the reviewing system through a more collaborative mindset and opens up the complete scholarly discussion rather than just making accessible the results of that discussion. Diamond OA publishers will consider encouraging open reviewing policies that are in line with the NISO Standard Terminology for Peer Review (NISO MECA Working Group and Standing Committee, 2023). They should provide reviewers with the possibility of: (a) signing their reviews either with their identity only visible to the editor, author, and the other reviewers, or with their identity visible to all readers; (b) publishing either review summaries or the full content of their review reports with identities visible or not, either alongside the published article or in an open preprint repository. Such policies can also allow the corresponding author to opt for publishing either review summaries or the full content of review reports of their article or chapter. In their efforts to introduce open peer review and choose the preferred type of it, IPs should listen carefully  to research communities, set their open peer review goals, be pragmatic in approaching it, plan technologies and costs, further communicate the concept, and evaluate performance (Ross-Hellauer & Görögh, 2019).

Preprints and repository deposits

Diamond OA publishers should understand their role in the wider ecosystem of open scholarly communication, interact and collaborate with other actors such as repositories, preprint sharing services or data archives, and encourage, instead of preventing the free circulation of knowledge. They should accept the submissions of preprints that are already available, and allow the deposit of any version of the published work in open repositories of authors’ choice, before or after the publication. If the publisher uses a CC BY licence, and/or if it has a policy where authors retain publishing rights, the right to deposit and share is already granted to the authors.

Incentives and rewards

Diamond OA publishers should be aware of recent efforts to reform the research assessment (e.g. Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA)) and facilitate it through their policies and practices. They should provide acknowledgements and make the publishing work of editors, reviewers and other contributors visible and recognisable. They should also apply standards that will enable easier tracking, monitoring, giving credit, and rewarding OS practices (primarily through describing them with quality metadata and using persistent identifiers). Using internationally standardised systems like the CRediT taxonomy (NISO, n.d.) for different contributor roles is a preferred practice.


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Further reading

  • Adema, J., Moore, S., & Steiner, T. (2021). Promoting and nurturing interactions with open access books: strategies for publishers and authors. (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5572413 
  • Angelaki, M., Avanço, K., Clivaz, C., Giglia, E., Gingold, A., Kamatsos, P., Lebon, C., Mounier, P., Pianzola, F., Polydoratou, P., Rosinsky, C., Schirrwagen, J., Ševkušić, M., Stanić, N., & Stranac, K. (2021). OPERAS White Paper: common standards and FAIR principles. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5653414
  • Štebe, J., Bezjak, S., & Dolinar, M. (2020). Guidelines for the implementation of scientific publishing policies of research data citation in scientific publications and assuring access to primary data, used in publications (2.5). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4040672 
     

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