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the technological provider, the publisher and reader is really important. There’s trust in the peer review system, and when peer review isn’t happening there should be some transparency and openness and saying where this research came from and what it relates to.’ There is also the issue of trust in the way


others make use of the open data that is increasingly being shared, and as Hahnel points out, this is one of the areas where perceptions have actually been damaged by the pandemic: ‘It used to be the reason that people didn’t want to publish their data because they didn’t want to get scooped. The statistics are showing that that’s falling down the order of importance now, and now the top reason is misuse of their data. If I publish my data people are going to use it for their own twisting of words? I think this is a direct reaction to Covid, but people are also now seeing that if they publish their data they get more opportunities for collaboration. Some 35 per cent of respondents had been involved in a collaboration as a result of data they had previously shared.’ As Hahnel went on to say, the pandemic


also brought out those with more questionable reasons for sharing data. ‘There’s always a trade-off with fast but good publishing. With preprints, with the large majority of open data publishing, there is no peer review. We have seen a lot


“We’ll get more evolution in the technology, more experiments. Not all of them will work.”


of people who are making content openly available, but then it starts to be more questionable, and you have to ask ‘What are the motivations for sharing this data?’. ‘You always had the memory of water


folks, who had interesting angles to their research and couldn’t get it published elsewhere, but then you’d start to get the fake news brigade, and the quality of the research, or the quality of the questions being asked probably needed to be dug into a little bit more. In 2020 all of the content that came out at the beginning was well-intended, and I’d say we’re now at a phase where public trust is changed and not all of it is well intended. We’ve definitely had to update our terms on what kind of content we’re accepting.’ At the same time as the culture


around open science is changing, there are still ongoing technical challenges to be overcome, as Heckner pointed out: ‘There’s also a large amount of technological work and infrastructure that needs to exist in order to support


open science. Open science will really be successful when there is a co-linking between the artefacts in the research system. There has been some really great work in this area with CrossRef, with organisation IDs like ROR (Research Organization Registry), connecting people with their research, and to the other researchers that are citing and using and contributing to that research. But that stuff isn’t free, so continued investment in that infrastructure, continued collaboration between technological providers and their publishers, is something that needs to exist and continues to need to be invested in, in order for this to be a successful movement.’ Hahnel also raised the importance of metadata, also highlighting the potential of new technologies to help with some of those problems: ‘The idea of fast but good publishing is what I see as the next 10 years of open science. ‘We’re starting to see that you can build


on top of the research that has gone before, getting the machines to do the work. AlphaFold, with the PDB (Protein Data Bank) and UniProt (the Universal Protein Resource), is the first great example of machines and information working together in the academic space to move further faster. ‘The next 10 years is going to be a large push towards that, but we need to have


‘Less progress’ for research in 2020 – survey


Two thirds of academic researchers globally suffered ‘setbacks’ in terms of collaboration last year. That is the conclusion of a


survey by Google Cloud, which explored cloud adoption and deployment within the academic sector during the pandemic. The study surveyed 1,591 academic researchers globally (including North America, South America, Europe and APAC), looking at how the pandemic has impacted research capabilities. Key findings include the


following: • Globally, 67 per cent of researchers reported making less progress in 2020 due to collaboration setbacks;


• 95 per cent of respondents said the pandemic accelerated their need for cloud-based tools, including communication tools;


• 96 per cent of those surveyed


reported an increased use of tools such as cloud, data and analytics, digital productivity tools, or Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning; and


• More than 93 per cent of researchers across all work environments agree that Covid-19 has deepened the current and future needs for cloud computing in their organisations.


Survey data also revealed some differences among institutions and regions. For example, researchers employed by private laboratories were more likely than those in other types of research facilities to report an increased use of cloud. Regionally, organisations in Colombia, the U.S., and Australia were the most likely to increase their investment in cloud solutions. Steven Butschi, head of education at Google Cloud, said:


8 Research Information December 2021/January 2022


‘The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all industries over the last year and a half, and research institutions were no exception. In fact, making advancements in medicine and science became an even more urgent priority. Many private sector and government agencies around the globe turned to the cloud to help their remote employee base stay connected and collaborate with cloud tools like chat, video,


large file sharing, live document editing, and more. But some scientific research still requires face-to-face collaboration in a lab environment. ‘This is why we wanted to dig


deeper to understand how Covid may have impacted the progress researchers have been making in various critical fields, including medical research, geophysics, climate science, chemistry, computer engineering and more.’


@researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info


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