Analysis and news
Accelerating open science in physics
Daniel Keirsconsiders open science from the perspective of a physics publisher, including some of the steps needed to accelerate progress
Open science has numerous definitions, but it includes making science more accessible, reusable and transparent, increasing reach and reproducibility, and fostering trust in its results. It’s also about cultural change and
increasing the diversity and inclusivity of people and ideas. It is the right thing to do, and strengthens scientific integrity and trust, but it can also help accelerate scientific discovery by enabling more people to collaborate and share ideas efficiently and cooperatively. Physics was one of the earliest scientific
communities to embrace internet-enabled open science. The arXiv repository, where researchers in physics and related disciplines can share drafts of their scientific papers publicly before submission to a journal, was established in the early 1990s. In the last decade SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), an initiative coordinated by CERN, enabled most journals in particle and high-energy physics to transition fully to an open access publication model.
By the end of 2014, arXiv hosted more than one million preprints and has seen annual growth in the upload of new papers of more
26 Challenges in the Scholarly Publishing Cycle 2020/2021
“The pandemic has underlined the role of open science”
than 10 per cent in recent years – suggesting researchers increasingly see benefit in sharing their work earlier and openly before formal publication. Simultaneously, the number of peer-reviewed physics articles published in open access journals almost doubled between 2016 and 2019. The expansion in potential access to articles can support faster and wider impact of research. In 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic has underlined the role open science can play: highlighting the value in the open dissemination of scientific results in maximising access, combined with rigorous but prompt peer review to further scrutinise and verify claims to maintain trust and integrity in the scientific record. These needs are not new this year, but the urgency of the scientific response to the pandemic has
emphasised them. Learned society publishers like us, rooted within a scientific community, must help address the need to make science more open and reliable – both in the context of the current pandemic and for the longer-term advancement of the physical sciences. When thinking about how we do this,
we must ask: What can we do to improve scientists’ ability to discover, read, interpret, share and build upon the outputs of scientific research? And how can we enable researchers to better observe how scientific claims are developed and asserted, and better understand the checks and processes a scientific work undergoes before public dissemination? All have their own challenges, which we are working to address in our own scientific community context through our ‘open physics’ programme. This is our commitment to supporting increased access, transparency and inclusivity in the physical sciences.
All about access Access is fundamental to making science more open. Accessible research results provide a foundation for broader scientific engagement and collaboration.
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